White and Black
by DiscordianSamba
Summary: AU. One choice changed everything. Deciding to keep being half ghost to himself, even from his friends, Danny finds that this may have been a grave mistake, as something within him begins to change, and he doesn't know if he can stop it. Now faced with the emergence of a dangerous split personality, he might find that the cost for his lies is more than he is willing to pay.
1. White

Author's Note: And so begins the rewrite of Black and White, White and Black. Which is uh, just the old title flipped, ohohohohoho I am so clever, not. As promised, this will go into rotation with Dangerous Obsessions and Blood and Snow, so the next thing that will update will be BAS. Two of a Kind won't be put into the rotation for some time, but it will be at some point- as will a super secret brand new, not a rewrite project, should all go well! But I have to finish plotting that still, so it has to wait!

Danny Phantom doesn't belong to me, of course. At any rate, please read and review if you can! Improvements in this story, just off the top of my head, will include more fleshed out roles for Tucker and Valerie, and more ghost involvement, namely with Walker in this case.

* * *

White and Black

Chapter One: White

It was a normal school day at Casper High, a bright, sunny winter day, a light coating of snow on the ground outside. Students were quietly whispering to each other as they sat crouched underneath the cafeteria tables, some exchanging anxious looks, others just looking flat out bored. As they heard the sounds of commotion from outside the cafeteria doors, the sounds of a battle raging on outside, some of the speculated what would need to be replaced this time, and several students were praying that they wouldn't come out of this to find their locker trashed for the fifth time in a row. Others debated on which ghostly assailant had intruded into the school this time, casting bets.

At any other school, this would be odd, cause for alarm, even, but at Casper High, spending a part of the day hiding underneath the lunchroom tables, or in the gymnasium, protected by the ghost shield that had been installed at the school three years ago, had become standard procedure. If there wasn't a ghost attack at school, then there was bound to be one elsewhere- the Nasty Burger, the local water park, and the park tended to be supernatural hotspots as well. Or perhaps more accurately, the entirety of Amity Park was one giant supernatural hot spot.

"Aw man," Eighteen year old Tucker Foley groaned as he pulled off his trademark red beret, glowering at the piece of chewed up gum that had now become attached to it. "You would think people would stop doing this, from all the time we have to spend hiding under these damn things. Why do we even need to hide under them if we have a ghost shield that's supposed to be protecting us?"

"Beats me." Sam Manson shrugged her shoulders, violet eyes sliding over towards her friend. "It's not like the tables will protect us a whole lot if it breaks."

"Yeah, but Phantom sure will!" Tucker flashed a grin, successfully plucking the wad of gum from his hat, and sticking it to the bottom of one of the chairs.

"Oh, yes, Phantom, because his track record is _stellar." _Sam said, rolling her eyes, not seeing what her friend saw in the white haired ghost boy.

"Aw come on Sam, don't be so hard on him! He did protect us from that ghost invasion, and there was that time he saved Jazz from being vaporized by an evil ghost therapist." Tucker protested. "He's a hero!"

"Yeah, but there was also that time when he attacked the mayor, and the other time he trashed Axion Labs." Sam pointed out. "Look, I'm not saying that he doesn't do some good stuff, but he's just a ghost, Tucker. He's obviously only trying to keep other ghosts out of his territory."

"Whatever you say, Sam." Tucker shrugged his shoulders. "By the way, have you seen Danny? Man, we _always _seem to wind up in the wrong safe room."

"Not a sign of him. I don't even think I saw him when I got to school this morning." Sam said, peering out from underneath the table to check on the other students in the cafeteria. "Well, he's probably hiding in the gymnasium. He might just be late again, of course, given that I didn't see him in the hall. I'm sure he'll be fine though. You know his dad makes him carry around one of those ecto guns with him, right?"

"Yeah, how does he get away with that anyways?" Tucker asked. "I mean technically it is a weapon."

"A weapon designed to hunt ghosts." Sam pointed out. "I don't think Lancer knows he has it though, otherwise he probably would take it away from him. Well, it's not like Danny would ever use it to hurt someone."

"True enough!" Tucker grinned. "That, and he's a lousy shot." Pausing, he strained his ears. "Oh hey, it's quiet out there now. You think it's over?"

"I hope so. I'm starting to feel cramped." Sam complained. "And no offense Tucker, I like you and all, but what exactly did you eat for breakfast this morning?" She eyed him.

"Only a hearty helping of sausage, bacon and eggs! Why do you ask?" Tucker frowned.

"Ah, that explains everything then." Sam frowned, crinkling her nose. Sometimes Sam wondered if it weren't for the fact that they had Danny in between them to bridge the gaps, if she and Tucker would have become friends.

The intercom crackled then, and they heard the voice of their vice principal, Mr. Lancer, come on over it, informing the students that they may return to their classes. Sounds of gratitude were heard all over the cafeteria, as students began to emerge from beneath their tables. Sam paused as she came out, stretching and letting out a relieved sigh. "About time." She said. "I felt like I was starting to understand what sardines feel like."

"I'll say!" Tucker chimed in, filing out the door with the other students. He let out a low whistle as he looked over the hallway. "Looks like it was a pretty tough ghost. Look at all these holes in the floor. And _oooh_." He winced. "They got Davy's locker _again_. Isn't that the fourth time in a row?"

"Fifth." Sam corrected him. "You would think he would try to apply for a locker change already."

"Boy, I'll say. I hope he didn't have anything important in there." Tucker sympathized with his fellow student. His locker had been trashed a few times in the past four years, when ghosts had started appearing in Amity Park. His PDA had been stolen at least twice, and various replacements had been broken by ghosts more time than he could count.

"Yeah, well, it's a good thing the school has insurance." Sam noted, neatly stepping around a still smoking hole in the floor. Anything else she might have said was cut off by a voice calling out to them.

"Sam, Tucker!" Danny Fenton approached them, looking around the hallway. "Some mess, huh? I guess I missed everything again."

"Yeah, well it's not like we see much of it either, dude." Tucker shrugged his shoulders. "Did you sleep in again Danny?"

"Ugh, yeah." Danny rolled his eyes. "And somehow I'm _still _tired." He told him, yawning as if to emphasize the point, though the bags underneath his eyes did that trick well enough. "Looks like it's nap time for me in Mr. Lancer's class today."

"That's becoming a real problem for you, Danny." Sam pointed out, looking over her old friend. "You should get it checked out. Do a sleep study or something." She advised him.

"No thanks." Danny held up his hands, shaking his head. "Having to sleep in a room with a bunch of wires attached to you or whatever? Not really my cup of tea, Sam. I'm fine, anyways, a couple of sleepless nights have never hurt anyone."

"If you insist." Sam relented, not wanting to argue with him when he looked about ready to nod off at any moment. It was just recently that it looked like her friend was lacking sleep, she knew that much, it had been an ongoing problem for the past four years or so. It had gotten worse lately, however, she noted, around half a year ago. It was a cause of concern for her, but on it's own, it wouldn't trouble her so much.

That was, if it was the _only _problem.

It was the injuries that caught her eye, mostly. Bandages and bruises, cuts and scrapes, in just about every place you could think to look, some of which had scarred. Danny had taken to wearing long sleeved shirts even during the summer, in order to conceal some of the aforementioned scars. He claimed that it was just due to plain clumsiness, which could explain some of the injuries- Danny wasn't exactly the most coordinated person on the face of the planet, but not the others. There were just too many of them for it to be just that. Sam knew well enough that the Fentons would never abuse any of their children, and Dash's bullying had more or less halted around the eleventh grade, so it wasn't that. She sometimes wondered if Danny had gotten himself involved in some bad business, but surely he would _tell _his two oldest and closest friends if that were the case?

Although Danny had never exactly been a model student, his grades had done a nosedive since he entered high school. He had almost failed ninth grade, and it was a stroke of pure luck that he had managed to pass. While they hadn't gotten that bad since then, they were still nowhere near what she knew he was capable of. There were also the absences, the tardiness, days when he would come to school, and then suddenly cut it for the rest of the day, all without a word to them. Some of them were excused due to illness, but that was only a hand full out of a vast, vast pool. It happened so often, most teachers had given up on giving him detention for them- which he often skipped as well anyways.

If it weren't for his personality, Danny probably would have been pegged as a delinquent. But her friend wasn't that kind of guy, Sam knew, and never got into any trouble otherwise. At least, that was what she thought. To be honest, these days, she and Tucker didn't get to spend a whole lot of time with Danny. He always seemed to be busy with something, a part time job, he had told them. It was too embarrassing, so he wasn't going to tell anyone what it was.

"Don't worry Sam, if it keeps up, I'll get it checked out, okay?" Danny promised her, flashing her a grin. "Come on, we better get to class before Lancer notices we're missing.

"Right, right, of course." Sam snapped out of her thoughts, following Danny and Tucker to the classroom. She noticed now, that peeking out from underneath the left sleeve of his jacket, there was a bandage there. It hadn't been there yesterday- had he gotten hurt _again_? Frowning deeply, Sam's eyes narrowed, resolving herself to confront him about this after class.

* * *

"Damnit, he got away!" Sam snapped her fingers. As if somehow sensing her mood, Danny had left school ahead of them, giving her the slip. "He always does this these days. Don't you think it's weird, Tucker?" She asked him, glancing over towards her friend, who was walking next to her.

"Well, kind of I guess." Tucker frowned, thinking about it. He was just as worried as Sam, to be honest, and didn't understand why there seemed to be something their friend wasn't telling them. "But it's _Danny_, Sam. I don't think he's really got himself mixed up in any kind of trouble. I mean, he's a good kid, right?" He asked, as if half unsure of it himself.

It was true that the two of them didn't see Danny a whole lot these days. They saw him and talked to him inside of school, and they almost always ate lunch together. But it had been awhile, now that he thought about it, since Danny had spent time with them after school, or on the weekends. They'd tried to ask him to spend time with them sometimes, but something always seemed to come up at the last minute that kept him from coming. Truth be told, it was more than a little irritating.

Tucker had a theory though, but it wasn't one he planned on sharing with Sam. Or anyone else, for that matter. Even he thought it sounded crazy.

"I know, I know." Sam frowned, running a hand through her hair. "But it feels sometimes like we don't even know him anymore, Tucker, and I hate that. We used to be so close! We knew everything about each other!" She sighed, kicking the ground in front of her. "I just don't get it, Tucker. What changed? What happened? Was it something we did? Is that why he doesn't want to hang around with us anymore?"

"No, I think Danny still wants to hang around with us." Tucker told her. "He wouldn't talk to us in school if he didn't like seeing us, after all."

"Yeah, you're right." Sam conceded. "I just don't like it, it feels like he doesn't trust us, or something. I know there's something big he's keeping from us. From _everyone_."

"Well, yeah. That... kind of does suck." Tucker admitted. "Well, you can always try his house, if you're that determined to get this over with, Sam. He's got to come home at some time. You can confront him there!"

"Mm, sounds a bit unfair to me." Sam frowned, considering the idea. "But, I think he's asking for it at this point. You coming with me, Tucker?" She asked.

"Nah, I've got way too much homework to take care of. They sure do dish it out in those upper level classes." Tucker laughed.

"Alright, I'll see you tomorrow, then." Sam grinned at him, before making her way to the Fenton residence. Knocking on the door, she smiled as the door was answered by Danny's mother, Maddie Fenton.

"Sam! What a pleasant surprise, we almost never see you over anymore!" Maddie opened the door, letting her in. "Come in, come in, it's freezing outside. Are you here for Danny?"

"Yes, is he in?" Sam asked.

"He just came home a little bit ago. He should be up in his room. You know where to find it, right?" Maddie asked.

"That I do, Mrs. Fenton!" Sam nodded, already on her way up the stairs. She stopped in front of Danny's door, reaching over to knock. She paused then, reaching for the handle instead, and found it locked. Groaning, she knocked on the door. "Danny? You in?"

There was a clattering sound from inside his room then, and it sounded like he was hurrying to shove some things out of site. She heard the sound of the door unlocking, and found herself face to face with Danny. "Sam! Didn't expect to see you here. Is everything alright?" He asked her, masking his nervousness well, but not well enough for her to tell what he was really feeling.

"Of course!" Sam told him with a smile, barging her way into the room, past Danny. "I just thought we could hang out, maybe work on our homework together. Just like old times, you know?"

Danny winced a little at that, shutting the door behind him. "Look, Sam, I'm sorry. I know it sort of looks like I'm blowing off you and Tucker lately-"

Sam cut him off. "_Lately_? Danny, you've been doing this for the past few _years_. We barely get to see you anymore. And whenever we do, you always seem like you're hurt." She pointed out, meeting his eyes. "Like today. Let's see it, Danny, come on."

Danny groaned, seeing that there was no arguing with Sam. "Fine, fine, just a second." He said, reaching to pull off his shirt. That caused the goth girl to flush a bright shade of crimson, but she quickly banished it at the sight of what lay underneath his clothing. The aforementioned bandage wound it's way up from Danny's left wrist, on up to his arm and shoulder, then wrapped around to reach his other shoulder, covering the upper part of his chest. There was a second set of bandages around his tower torso, although these appeared a bit older. She stood there, gawking openmouthed at the extent of the bandages.

"Danny, you-" She gawked, unsure of what to say as her friend tugged his shirt back on. "Where on Earth did you get these from? And don't tell me you tripped, Danny- You know I don't buy it."

"Sam, I-" Danny began, but she cut him off again, eyes narrowed.

"If you're just going to tell me another lie, please don't bother Danny." Sam said. There was silence in the room then, and she gave him a hard stare for a few long moments. "Really, Danny? You aren't even going to try?"

"You asked me not to lie." Danny pointed out, sounding sheepish.

"So that's it, then?" Sam made a choked sound, disbelieving. "You just aren't going to tell me the truth, are you? Danny, I'm your friend! Or at least I thought I was!" She shouted, throwing her arms out to her side. "I've always told you all of _my _secrets. I've always trusted you! Why is it that you can't return the favor? What are you doing that you need to be so damn secretive about?"

"Sam, I," Danny flinched, expecting this reaction, but not quite to this level. "Look, Sam, I'm sorry. I just... I can't tell you. It's not that I don't trust you, of course I do! You and Tucker are my best friends, it's just..." He frowned, trying to find the right words. "It's complicated, and I don't want to get you involved."

"Really, Danny?" Sam asked, not seeming to fully believe him. "I'm your friend, and so is Tucker. If you're going through something, then we want to be involved in it! If you're in some kind of trouble, we can help you, if only you'll let us! All you have to do is just open up a little."

"_I can't!" _Danny yelled at her, much louder than he had intended to. He saw Sam flinch, and a look of regret instantly passed through his face. "Oh geez, Sam, I'm sorry, that was too much, I didn't mean to yell."

"No, you know what?" Sam looked at him. "Stow it for now, Danny." She told him. "If that's the way it is, if you can't accept my help, my trust, then I'm just..." She sighed, shaking her head. "I can't do it, Danny. I don't know if I can keep being friends with someone who clearly doesn't trust me enough to help him when he's obviously gotten mixed up into something bad."

"Sam, come on, it's not like that-" Danny began, but was cut off by Sam excusing herself from his room, slamming the door behind her. Once she was gone, Danny groaned, shoulders slumping as he slumped down against the door, resting his head on his knees. "Good one, Fenton. Your best friend, and you had to go and get into a fight with her. I don't know if she's going to forgive you for this one."

_Who needs her forgiveness? You could just take her, if you really wanted her._

Danny froze, his blood running cold, eyes going wide. Clutching his head, he swore underneath his breath, trying to push the voice in his head away, to ignore it.

_Oh come on now, you already know that doesn't work._

"Shut up." Danny hissed, eyes flashing green. "Sam's my _friend_, I'm not going to do anything to hurt her."

_Friend, friend, you're never going to get anywhere with that kind of outlook. _The voice in his head seemed to laugh. _Now, I, on the other hand, could probably get her falling for me with no problem._

"Yeah, well, I don't exactly trust your idea of _romance."_ Danny hissed, eyes narrowing.

_Hmph. You're no fun._

"Would you just shut up already!" Danny shouted, pounding his fist against the door. He winced then, as he heard the sound of his mother coming to check on him and groaned, putting his head in his hands as he heard the voice chuckle, fading into the back of his mind again.

"Danny?" Maddie knocked on his door, frowning deeply. "Is everything alright in there?" She asked. "Sam left here in an awful huff."

"Yeah, mom, sorry." Danny apologized. "We just had a bit of a fight, is all. We'll make up soon enough!" He assured her.

"Well, if you're sure." Maddie frowned, sounding uncertain. "I'll leave you alone then, Danny. Dinner is in an hour."

"Alright, thanks mom!" Danny called through the door, sighing as he heard his mother walk off. "Damnit it, Fenton, exactly what is it that you've gotten yourself into?" He spread himself out over the floor, staring up at the ceiling, resting his arm over his eyes.

If only Sam had asked him that question half a year ago instead of today. He might have been able to finally confess to her the truth, the truth that he had been keeping to himself ever since that day four years ago, when he had accidentally turned on his parent's Ghost Portal while he was inside of it. It had changed him, changed him into something that wasn't human anymore, not entirely. Half ghost, he thought, removing his arm and fixing his eyes on what was apparently the world's most fascinating ceiling tile.

"Why the hell didn't I tell her in the first place anyways?" Danny asked to himself, and then cringed a little, all too quickly recalling the answer. "Oh right, _that." _He heaved a sigh, closing his eyes. It might have not been so bad to let her know the truth, that he was Phantom, Amity Park's infamous ghost boy. He knew she would keep it a secret, and he knew that Tucker would as well. And if it had been half a year ago, he would have told them both had they confronted him about it.

But things had changed since then.

_He _had appeared.

At first it was just a stray, lingering feeling in the back of his mind, something he noticed when he was about to drift off to sleep, not something he really worried about. But it had gotten worse. Strange new urges sprang up inside of him, as if there was someone or something goading them on, urging him to be more violent, to abandon the innocent to save his own skin, to abuse his powers for his own advantage. But he had ignored it- whatever anyone else thought, he was a hero, or at least, he was trying to be one.

But it didn't just stop there. Then the voice had appeared. At the start, he had only caught snippets of it, but it had shown up more and more then, until it was a near constant companion in his head. It was his voice, Danny knew that, but edged with something that was unfamiliar to him. It wasn't a pleasant companion to have at all either, quickly proving itself to be rather sadistic in nature, violent, possessive, almost evil, Danny thought at times. It felt the need to chime in about everything and anything, at all times.

But he could handle that, right? It was just a voice, it had no real power over him.

That was when the blackouts began.

Grimacing, Danny recalled the first time he had come to awareness with no idea where he was, or what he had been doing. It was recent, just a few weeks ago, in fact. He had found himself out on the streets in the middle of the night. Sometimes it happened in the middle of the day, but only when he was fighting ghosts, it seemed. He would black out for a minute or two, and when he came back to himself, what he found usually wasn't pretty. But more often than not, it happened at night, and it probably was why he felt like he wasn't actually getting any sleep lately.

It was why he was fighting his hardest to not go to sleep these days. It seemed fine if he caught a nap or two, as long as he didn't drift off into deep sleep, but if he did, then Danny knew that he was waiting there inside of him, for the chance to take him over. The worst part of it was, it was a part of him. He knew that, he knew it all too well. If it were some kind of invading ghost, some kind of trick, a manipulation of sorts, then he could handle it like he always did.

But it wasn't.

It was him.

This voice was a part of him, a part that he didn't much care for, but a part none the less. And it was getting stronger with each passing day, and he had no idea what to do about it. He thought about leaving Amity Park, but the thought of leaving behind a distraught family and friends was too much for them. He decided to save _that _for a last resort.

"Damnit." Danny sat up, cursing in frustration. He knew, some part of him knew, that he needed to talk to somebody about this. But who could he talk to? He couldn't talk to his parents, that was for sure. He knew, or he thought he knew, what they would say. He couldn't tell this to Jazz, she wasn't even here, and she didn't even like this whole ghost business besides. He couldn't tell Tucker because well, as good a friend as he was, he wasn't exactly the best person to turn to for advice. Valerie already wanted Phantom dead, and telling _her _the truth would just give her all the more reason to do so. And Sam...

Sam was different. He didn't want her to know about this. Didn't want her to know that he was half ghost, didn't want her to know that he thought he was slowly losing his mind.

Or _worse_.

* * *

"I can't _believe _that guy!" Sam huffed, shoving her hands inside her coat pockets as she trekked back to her house. "Here I am, trying to offer to help him and listen to his problems, and he still can't manage to be honest with me!" Her mouth set in a tight frown, she glowered down at the sidewalk as if it were somehow the source of all of her problems. Sure, maybe she had gone a little overboard, but she had lost her temper, and she didn't exactly think anyone could blame her for it. They were supposed to be best friends, and best friends were supposed to share things with each other! What exactly was it that Danny was doing that he couldn't tell them about?

Calming herself down a bit, Sam heaved a sigh. Now that she thought about it more calmly, Danny probably did have some kind of reason behind this. Her friend just wasn't the kind of person to lie to her without good reason. Frowning, she scratched the back of her head, before heaving another sigh. "Well, maybe I'll apologize to him tomorrow in school." She said, thinking back on it, she probably had said some things that she shouldn't have said. Suddenly, she felt like the bad guy here.

She blinked then, feeling something cold falling on her nose. Stopping and glancing upwards, she noticed that it had started to snow again, the skies having clouded over while they were in class. "Well, hopefully it won't snow too hard." She said to herself, gazing up at the skies. Well, even if school was canceled, she would still find Danny tomorrow and apologize to him. She thought about going back and doing it now- but somehow that seemed like a bad idea, and she didn't think her temper had cooled down enough yet. What if they just ended up having another fight? Sam didn't exactly like fighting with her friends, as much as she wouldn't back down from one should it occur.

Sam shivered suddenly then, as if all at once the temperature had dropped. Eyes darting around, knowing that this was a sure sign of a ghost being around, she quickly spotted him. Amity Park's most infamous ghost, Phantom, was flying above her, and as soon as he was gone from her overhead space, the temperature rose again. Frowning, Sam watched Phantom as he flew off in the direction she was heading, not seeming to have noticed her.

"Showing up at school today, and now on patrol in the neighborhood. What a busy guy." Sam observed, quirking an eyebrow. Well, she supposed he had all the time in the world, being dead and all. She wondered, briefly, exactly what it was he did in his spare time when he wasn't fighting other ghosts. "What a strange one." She said aloud, frowning deeper. Glancing behind her, and then off in the direction Phantom had gone, Sam paused for a moment, considering her options.

"Well," Sam grinned a little. "...I don't suppose it would hurt to follow him for a little bit. Tucker sure would be jealous if he learned that I got to see the infamous ghost boy up close and personal."

Sometimes Sam felt like she and Tucker were the only people in Amity Park who hadn't had some kind of up close and personal encounter with the ghost boy. Sometimes it felt like Phantom was purposefully avoiding them, which was utterly absurd to think about. Taking off down the street, making sure to stay out of the ghost boy's sight, Sam followed him, keeping her eyes half on the sky, and half on the ground in front of her to make sure she didn't run into something.

Truly though, Phantom was a strange ghost. He seemed to be growing, for one thing. When he had first appeared, he looked to be somewhere around thirteen or fourteen years old, and was never seen without his trademark black and white hazmat suit. These days, however, Phantom appeared somewhere in his late teens, maybe around Sam's age, she thought. He had mixed up his look as well, as if he had somehow acquired more clothing- that in itself was rather strange, as most ghosts always appeared to be wearing the same thing. These days, he leaned more towards white clothing, only with small hints of black. Today, Sam noted that he was wearing a short sleeved white shirt over a black, long sleeved shirt, and a pair of white jeans, black boots underneath them. He was wearing a black vest over this, and Sam chuckled a bit to herself, wondering if perhaps the infamous ghost was affected by the cold weather just as they were.

To be honest, Sam didn't exactly know what to make of Phantom, and spotting him made her mull over this. Carefully following him at a distance, able to pick out his flying form in the snowy skies, she considered what she knew about the ghost. Any fool could tell you that he was powerful, and had been growing more powerful ever since he appeared, around four years ago. His ghostly wail was a force to be reckoned with, and his ice powers were nothing to sneeze at either. That was why the Fentons were so worried about him, Sam thought. Although he seemed content at playing hero these days, should he decide he was tired of that, he would be very difficult to stop. They weren't the only ones hunting him, either, Sam knew, there was also the mysterious Red Hunter, and the government's own ghost hunting group, the Guys in White. Every so often a few stray ghost hunters showed up in Amity Park, but they usually weren't much to note.

Sam thought of Phantom as being rather territorial. He didn't like sharing Amity Park with other ghosts, though there were those he tolerated so long as they didn't raise a stink. Should they step out of line, however, Phantom was always there to send them packing, back to where they had come from. He didn't seem to involve himself all that much with petty crime, but then again, there wasn't a whole lot of it in Amity Park anyways. Before the ghosts had been showed up, the town had been considered as one of the safest in America. There hadn't been a murder in Amity Park at least since Sam was born. Robberies happened sometimes, as well as an assortment of other odd crimes, but nothing excessively violent, at any rate.

The worst crimes were committed by ghosts, naturally, ranging from property damage, to attempts to enslave everyone's minds. Phantom usually put a stop to them all, every so often working in tandem with Amity Park's more respected ghost hunters. Well, at least the Fentons, and very rarely the Red Hunter, Sam thought- the Guys in White weren't very interested in team ups, and they didn't really seem interested in ghosts aside from Phantom.

"Hm?" Sam frowned, noticing Phantom stopping mid-flight. Had he noticed her? No, it didn't seem like it, but it did seem like he had noticed something. He quickly vanished from sight then, and Sam blinked, searching around for him. Running, she caught up to where he had been when he vanished, and looked around, unable to find him. Frowning, she heaved a sigh, shoulders slumping and turning around, only to collide with something metallic, causing her to land rather unceremoniously on her rear.

"Oh, what do we have here?" A vaguely metallic voice greeted her ears, and Sam's eyes snapped open, going wide as she found herself staring up at the Ghost Zone's self proclaimed greatest hunter, Skulker. The robotic ghost was looking down at her in mild interest, as if he was considering something. "One of the ghost child's companions."

_Wait, what? _Sam thought, eyebrows knitting together. She knew by 'ghost child', Skulker was obviously referring to Phantom- who seemed to be his favorite 'prey'. But his companion? They had never even _met_. "Um, I'm sorry, but I sort of think you have the wrong person." Sam found herself saying, suddenly wishing she had one of the Fentons' ecto guns. Maybe she should talk to them about that.

"Oh yes, of course." Skulker, almost sounding amused by this. "Well, how convenient this is. You'll make fine bait for the whelp."

"Bait?" Sam shouted, springing to her feet. Oh hell no, she was not going to stick around here and be used as bait by this guy- she knew his reputation, after all. "Sorry, just remembered I have to be somewhere here, bye!" She yelled, taking off in the opposite direction.

Sam was fast, even when running in oversized combat boots, but apparently not fast enough to avoid being caught by a ghost. She swore as she felt a cold, metallic hand clamping around her wrist, and struggled against it, striking out with her leg, only to find it doing her far more harm than it did to the hunter ghost. Letting out a cry of pain, she preciously balanced on one leg, her left wrist still grasped tightly in Skulker's hand.

"Mm, had I been human, that would have been quite the good kick." Skulker observed, sounding pleasantly surprised. "And now that I get a closer look at you, your eyes are a very strange color. Perhaps I should consider taking them to add to my collection of oddities."

Sam paled at that comment, aforementioned violet eyes going wide. Did he just say what she thought he had said? Sam wasn't afraid of much, but the idea of having her eyes ripped from her head was enough to do it. It was what made her hearing Phantom's voice become the first and only time she had ever been glad to hear it.

"Let her go, Skulker!" The yell was punctuated with a fist, one that sent Skulker flying. Sam found herself being caught in the arms of Phantom, shivering briefly as contact with the ghost caused her body to chill.

Glancing down at the goth girl in his arms, Phantom swore mentally, wondering if she had been following him, wondering if she had been following him because she suspected something. But it didn't appear the latter was true, or at least, he didn't get the feeling from just looking at her. "Are you alright, miss?" He asked, doing his best to disguise his voice a bit.

"Y-yeah." Sam blinked, slowly nodding her head as Phantom put her down. She winced as he did, balancing on her right leg, a throbbing pain shooting through her left. "On second thought, it looks like I might have done pulled something." She grimaced, placing one hand on her throbbing ankle. At least, she hoped that was all she had done.

_Note to self, do not kick people in metal suits._

"Well, just sit tight, and I'll take care of this clown." Phantom gestured back in Skulker's direction, who was flying back towards them now. "I'll see to it that you get home safe and sound after this."

Turning his full attention to Skulker, Phantom raised an ecto shield, blocking a blast from the hunter ghost's rockets. Floating off the ground, Phantom charged him, firing off a pair of twin ecto blasts from his hands, which Skulker avoided. The match quickly turned into something of a mid-air hand to hand combat, which ended when Phantom grabbed hold of one of the wings of Skulker's jet pack, froze it, broke it off, and proceeded to knock him to kingdom come with the broken off wing. Pulling out a Fenton Thermos from a holster around his belt, he opened it up, quickly sucking Skulker in before he had a chance to recover.

Capping the Fenton Thermos and holstering it again, Phantom turned back towards Sam, flying back over towards her.

_Aw man, you should have let him have some more fun with her._

Phantom's eyes narrowed, but he forced himself not to respond to the voice's taunts, and instead, kneeled down in front of Sam, offering her a hand. "I assume you'll need a hand, miss?" He asked her, praying that she wouldn't recognize him. She hadn't these past four years, but then, he had made sure that she had never seen him up close, either. He knew Sam was a smart girl, but hopefully the sheer absurdity of her very much alive best friend being a ghost as well would be too much for her to put two and two together.

Sam frowned, unsure if she should take Phantom's offer. Sure, he liked to play hero, but that didn't exactly make him one. On the other hand, she thought, as she pulled herself to her feet with the help of his hand, her ankle hurt like _hell. _She would have to be an idiot to force herself to walk on it. "Well, I guess. If it's not too much trouble for you, Phantom."

"Not at all. Where do you live?" Phantom asked her, even though he knew very well. If he flew Sam straight to her house, that would be _way _too suspicious.

Sam told him, and yelped a little in surprise when she found herself being scooped up into his arms again, as if she was as light as a feather. Although she shivered against the cold of his body, which the white haired ghost quickly apologized for, she found something oddly familiar about all of this and frowned, wondering what it could be. Thinking over this, she was a bit stunned when she found that they were already in front of her place.

"Um, thank you." Sam said after a moment, as Phantom carefully placed her down on the front step of her house. She carefully balanced herself against a railing, quickly deciding to tell her parents that she had slipped on a patch of ice rather than the truth, that she had a run in with a ghost. Blinking again, she notice something that she hadn't before, namely, that Phantom appeared injured, green ectoplasm staining the clothing that covered his left arm. She didn't notice any tears in the material itself, however. "You're hurt."

Blinking, Phantom looked himself over, before looking at his left arm, pulling up his sleeve a bit and swearing underneath his breath. "Aw man, not _again_. The old hazmat didn't stain like this, I would have kept it if I hadn't grown out of it. Tch." He clicked his tongue, seeming more upset at the loss of an article of clothing than he was with being hurt. Then again, Sam thought to herself, he was a ghost, and therefore already dead.

Sam frowned then, finding something strange about Phantom's injury, although she couldn't place it at the moment.

"Ah, but don't worry about it." Phantom assured her, flashing a quick grin at her. "It's nothing, ghost and all. It'll heal quick."

_You should ask her to make up for it! You know, with her body._

The dirty look Phantom shot off to the side confused Sam, but it quickly vanished when the ghost boy noticed this. "Um, right, so you're home now and safe so... I have to get this guy sent back to the Ghost Zone." Phantom told her, looking a little nervous. Not liking the way the voice was talking, he decided it was best to get away from here as fast as possible. With that said, he took off, flying away from the Manson home, heading back for Fenton Works.

Sam cocked her head, watching Phantom go with curious eyes. Shrugging her shoulders, she decided it was probably a good idea to get in out of the cold and off her feet before she did anymore thinking. Opening the door, she limped inside, calling out for her parents, only to find that they seemed to be out. Well, she had some basic first aid knowledge, she could probably make do until they came home to take her to the doctor's.

Limping her way to the kitchen, she dug through the cabinets, looking for an ice pack, and grinned upon finding one. Filling it up with ice, she limped over towards the couch and flopped down, yanking off her combat boots, wincing as she pulled off her right sock to see just how many colors her ankle was already turning. Propping her foot up on a couch pillow, she applied the ice pack to it, shivering a little bit again.

That was when it struck her, like someone had just punched her in the gut.

The reason she thought Phantom's injury was strange was because it was in the _exact _same location as Danny's had been from earlier in the day. The color drained out of her face as she considered the implication of this, the chill of the ice on her ankle reminding her suddenly that Danny's own body temperature had been akin to it for quite some time, freezing cold, just like Phantom's. It had been a side effect of the accident he'd had with his family's ghost portal back when he was fourteen.

Her mind worked in a rush then, as if all of a sudden, doors opened and things unlocked, things snapping together as they hadn't before.

Fourteen. That was four years ago.

Phantom had appeared four years ago. The ghosts had appeared four years ago.

A drop in body temperature, an increase in clumsiness, strange injuries starting to appear, sudden strange behavior and strange absences from school. Now that she thought about it, _everything_ started from that accident four years ago.

But Danny _couldn't_ be Phantom. Phantom was a ghost, and he was very much dead, and Danny was quite alive.

Wasn't he?


	2. Ghost Boy

Author's Note: Chapter Two is here! Next chapter will really start to set the ball rolling on this, which I am excited to write. As always, Danny Phantom does not belong to me.

* * *

White and Black

Chapter Two: Ghost Boy

"Okay, Sam _no."_ Samantha Manson said to herself, trying to steady her thoughts, which were currently swimming about her head at a rapid pace. "What you are thinking is _stupid. _Danny Fenton is _not _a ghost." She told herself.

There was _no way_ he could be. After all, she knew Danny was alive- he had a pulse and a heartbeat, something which Phantom didn't. People just couldn't live and then die upon their own choosing, over and over again, they were generally one or the other. A human being couldn't just simply turn into a ghost. To think anything else was sheer absurdity.

What's more, Danny's own parents were ghost hunters. Surely they would have noticed _something _if their son was a ghost. And if they knew about it, why would they still be hunting Phantom so passionately? The thought that it was a cover briefly occurred to her, but she dismissed it, they seemed to be far too enthusiastic about ripping Phantom apart molecule by molecule for them to be faking it. Surely if they knew Phantom was their own son, they wouldn't say such things, right? The Fentons were good parents, Sam knew, and they would sooner give up ghost hunting than hurt one of their own children.

The more Sam thought about it, the more reasons why Danny _couldn't_ be Phantom cropped up. She always came back to her first point though- how could Danny, someone who was alive, also be Phantom, someone who was clearly dead? It just didn't make any sense to her. The thought that perhaps Phantom was somehow a fake ghost quickly popped in her head, but no, she had been pretty sure that she hadn't felt a heartbeat when she was being carried in his arms. No heartbeat meant dead, right?

Growing frustrated, Sam decided to change her location, and favoring her injured ankle, pulled herself off of the couch, ice pack in one hand. She limped up the stairs to her room, using the railing to help support her body weight. She made it up to her room, and grabbed her laptop from her desk, limping over towards her bed. There she flopped down, placing an extra pillow underneath her ankle, and plopped the ice pack back down on it. Settling the laptop in her lap, she turned it on.

Bringing up a search engine, she typed in 'Phantom'. Rolling her eyes as that got her a ton of results, only less than half having to do with what she was actually looking for, she added in 'Amity Park' to her search. That narrowed it down a bit, and the articles about Phantom showed up easier. Grinning to herself, she opened up several of them that looked promising, lightly skimming the contents. There were pictures in almost all of them, and almost on whim, she saved one of them, one from a year ago, onto her computer. Pulling it up in an image program, she cropped it until it was just the face, then brought up Danny's yearbook photo from that year, placing them side by side.

The strong resemblance made Sam let out a low whistle. She had thought that Phantom had looked a little like Danny- but she didn't exactly realize by how much. In fact, change the hair and eye color of the boys, and they would look exactly alike. She wondered how she had never noticed it before, but she supposed that she hadn't really been paying any attention. That, and she'd never actually really seen Phantom up close herself, either. She didn't have this crazy ass theory back then, either.

Drumming her fingers on her laptop, Sam frowned, contemplating something for a few moments. Eventually, she pulled out her cell phone, and dialed Tucker's number. She had to share this crazy theory of hers with someone, even if it only meant that they would kindly remind her that it was in fact, crazy. In fact, that was sort of what she was hoping for. Tucker was more or less a logical guy, right? There was no way he'd buy into this crackpot line of thinking she was doing.

Tucker answered the phone after the third ring. "Hey Sam. So, how did your talk with Danny go? Get anything out of him?" He asked her.

Sam blinked, then recalled that she hadn't had time to share the results of her earlier talk with Danny with Tucker. In the midst of everything, she had even forgotten about it. Right then, take things one at a time, start with that and build off of it. "Oh, the talk?" Sam said, frowning a little. "It didn't really go very well, Tucker. The talk kind of turned into a fight, and I _kind _of stormed out of his house. Which, now that I think about it, probably was not the smartest thing to do."

"Yikes. What did Danny do to trigger your temper?" Tucker questioned, grimacing on his side of the line. He could tell this would be a long call, so he temporarily set aside his pencil, pushing his chair back from his desk, distancing himself from his homework.

"I saw them, Tucker. _All _of them, or least all of them on his torso, including the new one- which was _huge_. There were so _many_!" Sam told him. "Haven't you ever seen them in gym class before?" She asked.

"By them, do you mean scars?" Tucker asked, frowning. "Sam, Danny's been changing in private ever since the tenth grade, when they started to get more noticeable. So to answer your question, I haven't seen them. Was it really that bad? He doesn't _act _like they are. I mean, I know he gets injured a lot... but were there really that many? Not all injures leave scars."

"Well, these did." Sam told him. "And there were a lot. If you ask me Tucker, it looks like he's been fighting." She confessed. Boys with scars was nothing new to her- Dash and Kwan had scars from playing football, she knew that because they had showed them off to Paulina and Star (and any other cute girls that had been looking, in fact) once during lunch. But those were nothing like Danny's, they were clearly the result of sports related accidents. Danny's scars... they weren't.

And there hadn't been so many of them.

"Ah." Tucker said, and Sam could all but hear the boy's brain working on the other side of the phone.

Frowning, Sam took a chance. "Tucker? Do you have some idea of what's going on?" She asked him. If Tucker had some kind of theory himself, then perhaps she should let him tell her about it first- it might help do away with her own crazy one.

"Well," Tucker frowned, adjusting the phone, moving it to his other ear. "...I _do _have a theory. But keep in mind when I say this, it's _just _a theory, which is why I haven't mentioned it to you sooner. So take it with a grain of salt, and don't laugh."

Sam paused, chewing on her lip for a moment, before she asked him another question. If he was that worried about what she would think of him when he told her, to Sam, it really could only mean one thing. After all, that was exactly how _she _was feeling about telling Tucker hers. "Does this theory have anything to do with Phantom?"

Sam could hear the surprise in Tucker's voice. "Yeah, it does, actually. How did you know, Sam?"

"I had an encounter with him when I was on my way home from Danny's place. By the way Tucker, before this gets too far, remind me at school tomorrow to apologize to him when I see him. I did sort of go too far in our argument earlier." Sam added. "Anyways, in regards to the Phantom encounter- well, perhaps _encounter _isn't the right word. I guess he saved me, really. You know, from Skulker, that one ghost who keeps trying to hunt him? I sort of... screwed up my ankle though, but it's not big deal!" She cut Tucker off, anticipating his concern. "Phantom brought me back home and everything, and during this, I noticed that the fighting had reopened another injury... one that was in the exact same place as Danny's."

"I see." Tucker said, pausing to process this information. "Sam, have you ever considered that Phantom might be possessing Danny?"

Sam blinked, startled at the suggestion. _Of course!_ Possession made so much more sense than the two of them being the same person. She hadn't even thought about it, for some reason. "No, I hadn't. You really think that Phantom's been possessing Danny? Don't you think the Fentons would notice that after awhile?"

"Phantom's a smart ghost. That said, I heard from Jazz that sometimes the Fenton's ghost hunting equipment goes haywire around Danny for some reason." Tucker shrugged. "I think they have some deeper connection though than just mere possession. I read on the Internet that some ghosts can use a physical host to manifest their body in the real word- kind of like a medium. When they do, they tend to take on traits of the main host. Now, I'm not really sure that Phantom is causing Danny any harm by merely possessing him, at least not directly. But damage that Phantom gets, Danny gets, is what I'm thinking." Tucker told her. "And of course, his poor sleeping habits are explained by the fact that Phantom is awake while he's asleep."

"Does Danny _know _he's possessed? This is sort of huge if it's true Tucker- what should we do?" Sam asked. "Should we tell his parents?"

"I'm _not _sure that's the best idea." Tucker said. "Like I said, it's just a theory, and there might be something else going on." He told her. "I think Danny knows though, at least, that's the impression that I get. He doesn't seem to resent Phantom for whatever reason, but," Tucker chuckled. "Danny's always had sort of a hero complex. I'm sure he'd be more than happy to help out Phantom in such a manner if it meant possibly saving the lives of hundreds of people, like he did when Amity Park was sucked into the Ghost Zone."

Sam couldn't help but laugh at that. "That's true. All the will and none of the power to actually carry it out. I hate to say it, but Danny is not the most physically gifted of folks." She frowned then though, seriously considering all the consequences of this theory. "So if Phantom is possessing Danny, how much do you think is Danny, and how much is Phantom? Or does Phantom sleep while Danny's awake, or something like that?"

"To be honest, I don't really know. The Fentons probably would know more about ghostly possession than I do, but I still don't think it's a good idea to ask them about it." Tucker told her. "I mean, they invent some pretty crazy things, what's to say that they wouldn't accidentally hurt Danny trying to get Phantom out of him? I mean, of course, it's not like they'd ever hurt him on purpose." He added, rolling his eyes. No way would that ever happen, the Fentons weren't those kind of people.

"That's a good point." Sam admitted. "And we should probably try and gather some more proof first."

"Right you are." Tucker nodded his head. "Well, I have to get back to the homework, Sam. You take care of your ankle, okay? Get your folks to take you to a doctor or something." He told her. When Sam promised she would, Tucker hung up the phone. He frowned a little, simply sitting there for a few minutes, thinking their conversation over. There was one point which had struck Tucker as strange- whatever Sam had thought Danny's connection to Phantom was seemed to have been different from what Tucker had in mind, though he couldn't possibly think what.

After all, it wasn't like they could be the same person, so possession was the only likely option. Frowning a little more, Tucker shook his head, putting down his phone and picking his pencil back up. Right now, he should concentrate on his homework- he had promised himself that he would get serious in senior year, after all.

* * *

"Alright, you two have been staring at me all morning." Danny said, looking rather weirded out. "And frankly, it's starting to creep me out. Care to spill why the sudden interest in the back of my head?" He asked them. Morning had thankfully, passed without incident that day, and the trio was now gathered in the lunch room, at their usual table.

"Oh, no reason, Danny." Tucker told him, laughing a little. "And we haven't been staring at you. Are you sure you aren't imagining things?" He asked him.

Danny frowned, giving his friend a skeptical look. He was glad when Sam had apologized to him when they had seen each other that morning, to which he returned his own apologies. It was still kind of awkward between them, though, since she knew full well that Danny had been actively lying to them about things now. That, and there was the fact that there seemed to be something on her mind. And ever since this morning, both Sam and Tucker had been looking at him oddly, as if they were waiting for some sign of something, or for him to grow a third arm or something of that nature. He was starting to get more than a little worried that they were on to his secret, especially after he had met Sam as Phantom yesterday.

Truth be told, he _had _been trying to avoid them both in that form. The less Phantom interacted with them, the less they would recognize Danny Fenton in him. He had the same rule for his parents, which was harder, and with Jazz, which was easier. Nobody else really knew him that well, not well enough to put two and two together like they could. Oh sure, there were times still when he needed to step in as Phantom to protect them, but normally, they weren't as involved as they had been yesterday. He could just fly in and then fly away in a snap, normally. Danny was still angry at the fact that Skulker had tried to use Sam as bait for him. This one of the reasons that he had decided to keep his identity a secret from everyone, so that they wouldn't be put in danger!

And Skulker had to go and blow that.

"Well, cut it out if you are. It's starting to give me the creeps." Danny told them with a frown.

_Why don't you just tell them you're a half-dead freak?_

Danny had to bite on his tongue to keep himself from telling himself to shut up out loud. Danny had enough problems as it was already, he didn't need his classmates to think that he was going crazy because he was talking to himself.

Even if that seemed to really be the case.

_You should just accept it and give up already. It would make things so much easier._

That caused Danny's eye to twitch, something both Sam and Tucker noticed. The pair exchanged brief glances with each other, taking note of Danny's troubled expression. Maybe they had been overdoing it with the observation today- they didn't exactly want Danny to feel like something of a lab rat, after all.

But they were worried about him.

If Phantom was possessing him, what kind of effects could that have on Danny? No, rather, Tucker and Sam could already see the effects. The lack of sleep, the falling grades, the frequent absences from school, the destruction of his social life, and that wasn't even to mention the impressive assortment of scars and bruises that Danny was starting to collect. Other than the satisfaction of knowing that he was involved in helping people, they really couldn't even begin to see how Danny was benefiting from this relationship, and they wondered if Phantom cared about the toll his possession was taking on his host. Did he even notice?

"Look Danny," Tucker was the one who decided to get into it, "You know if there's something going on with you, you can tell us, right?" He told him. "We're not going to freak out on you or anything."

"That's right, Danny." Sam told him. "Tucker and I are your friends, and no matter what it is you're hiding from us, we'll be there for you, through the thick and thin." She assured him. "I mean, we always have been, right?"

Danny heaved a sigh, having a feeling that this was coming. They weren't going to let this go, were they? "Look, Sam, Tucker." He began, glancing up at them. "I appreciate it. I really do. But it's not something that the two of you should be getting involved in." He told them, a grim look coming across his face. "I don't... I don't want either of you getting hurt."

"Danny, if you're doing something where you're at risk of getting seriously hurt, then it's all the more reason for you to tell us about it." Sam implored him. "We're worried about you, Danny. We're worried that you're getting yourself into something that you shouldn't be, and that you're putting yourself at risk, Danny. You're only human, after all."

_Although what's inside of you sure isn't. _Sam mentally added.

"Maybe _you _shouldn't be involved in what you're dealing with." Tucker suggested, meeting his friend's gaze. "It's clearly not doing you any favors- it's sort of a miracle you haven't flunked a grade yet, really. You got pretty close in ninth grade you know."

Unable to hold it, Danny turned away from him. "Look, Tucker, Sam, I'm sorry." He told them for what must have been the hundredth time, standing up. "I know that you two are worried about me, and I appreciate it, I do. I can't even begin to tell you how much that means to me. But this isn't just something I can talk to people about. It's... _complicated_."

"Does it have something to do with Phantom?" Sam asked, deciding to stop beating around the bush. When Danny flinched and paled at the mention of the ghost's name, she knew that she was spot on. "It does, doesn't it?"

"P-Phantom?" Danny stammered. "W-why would I have anything to do with Phantom?" He asked, rubbing the back of his neck, looking everywhere but his friend's faces. "My parents are ghost hunters, remember? There's no way that I would have anything to do with ghosts. I'm not that stupid, Sam."

"Look, Danny, you can quit hiding it." Tucker told him. "We know you have some connection to Phantom, and I've got to say, man, it's not exactly doing you any favors. I mean, have you looked at yourself recently? You're sort of a wreak these days. You're barely passing your classes, you hardly get enough sleep, you're never on time and you're always getting beaten up. If the two of you have some kind of weird pact or something going on, I suggest it's high time you sever it."

"It's not a pact exactly." Danny said, shoulders slumping, giving up. If they'd been able to get that far on their own, there was really no way he could keep them from learning the truth. Or at least, what they thought was the truth- Danny had serious doubts that anyone would arrive on him being half ghost on their own- it sounded so absurd. And the only thing Danny could think that was worse than Tucker and Sam discovering the truth on their own, was them discovering the wrong 'truth'. And if he kept resisting them, what if they went to his parents next, and told them about their suspicions, asked them what they thought? What would happen then?

_Oh, I think you know __**exactly **__what._

Danny twitched again, once again something which caught Sam and Tucker's attention. They'd seen it before, countless times now- what was that? It almost seemed as if he was reacting to something, but nobody had said anything. Was Phantom talking to Danny? The friends exchanged worried glances with each other, and Tucker stood up, placing a hand on Danny's shoulder.

"Look, Danny." Tucker began, meeting his friend's eyes. "I know it sounds corny, and cheesy, but we are your friends- and nothing you tell us will change that. You can tell us _anything."_

Danny gave them a long look, considering this, and at last, heaved a sigh. If it had already reached this point, perhaps now was the best chance that he had to come clean. If he kept up his lies after this... worse things could result from it, he thought. "Alright, but not here, not now. I want the two of you to meet me at..." He paused, trying to think of a time and a place. Somewhere without any other people around, of course. "Meet me at the park, nine o clock sharp. You know, that place with that old gazebo we found back in middle school, where nobody really ever hangs out? Come there." He told them, giving them both a weak smile.

"Of course." Sam said, glancing over at Tucker, seeming relieved that Danny had finally relented. "We'll be there, we promise. Is there anything else we need to know in the meantime?"

"Just keep an open mind when you guys come." Danny told them, looking a little sheepish.

"Danny, I'm goth. In case you haven't noticed, I'm sort of _all about_ open minds." Sam remarked dryly, quirking an eyebrow.

"Yeah, and I spend a lot of time on the Internet." Tucker said, shrugging his shoulders. "Whatever it is you're going to tell us, I'm _pretty _sure I've heard stranger."

"Not tell." Danny said, a hint of a grin on his face. "Show."

With that rather unhelpful clue, Danny departed for class ahead of them.

* * *

"Nine sharp, he says." Sam commented dryly, tapping her fingers against the worn wood of the old gazebo. "Be here, he says. Well _we're _here- but where exactly is _Danny_?" She asked Tucker, turning to look at him, rubbing her arms as she did so. "Should have brought a portable space heater or something, if he was going to keep us waiting this long, who asks to meet people outside in the middle of winter, anyways?"

"Danny, apparently." Tucker observed, arching an eyebrow. "He's not much of one for being effected by the cold." Another strange trait of his, now that Tucker thought about it. Even people good at dealing with the cold usually needed at least a light jacket- Danny, not so much. Speaking of coats, Tucker couldn't help but look at Sam's. "I don't see how you're cold in that fancy trench coat you're wearing though, Sam."

"What this?" Sam asked, lifting up a part of her trench coat. "Well, to be honest, I sort of... bought it more for it's looks than it's practicality. It's not really made out of the best materials to block out the chill." She admitted, face turning a light shade of red as she leaned against the side of the gazebo, raising her twisted ankle to take her weight off of it.

"Ah, see, that's funny, because I seem to recall you ranting about Paulina doing the same thing the other day, with that cut off coat of hers." Tucker observed, taking a seat on one of the benches.

"Oh, shut up. I didn't expect to be kept waiting out here for a whole thirty minutes." Sam told him, a sour look on her face as she gave Tucker's leg a light kick. "It's fine otherwise. How are you not cold?"

"No, honestly I'm freezing my balls off here too." Tucker admitted, it now his turn to sound embarrassed. "I just didn't want to be the first person to complain about it. Do you think maybe we should call Danny or something?"

"Good luck with that, I can almost never connect to his cell phone." Sam rolled her eyes. "What if he never planned on showing up at the start?" She asked him, then her eyes narrowed. "Or what if he did plan to meet us, but Phantom decided that he should have _other _plans? What if we triggered something we shouldn't have, Tucker?" She asked, suddenly sounding very worried.

"Relax, he's only thirty minutes late. For Danny, that's pretty normal these days." Tucker assured her, though he too, was starting to get a little bit worried himself. He had gotten from Danny the impression that he had intended to be here on time himself, and yet, he was nowhere to be found.

"Maybe I'll give his cell a try after all." Sam said after another minute or so. "You never know, it might decide to connect this time."

"That's pretty unlikely." Danny's voice startled them. As if he had just simply manifested from out of thin air, he stepped into the gazebo. Despite the chilly winter night air, he didn't have a coat on him, and he looked a little worse for wear, sporting a rather impressive bruise on his neck that hadn't been there that morning. "It's sitting inside a ghost's stomach at the moment, and I'm pretty sure the Ghost Zone is outside cell phone reception. Though I have been proven wrong before." He added, almost as an afterthought, giving his friends a sheepish grin. "I sort of haven't gotten it replaced yet."

"Danny!" Sam smiled a little, shoulders slumping in relief as he finally showed his face. She sucked in that breath quickly though, catching sight of that nasty looking bruise. Even in the dim light provided to them, she could still make it out, and it almost seemed to look like a hand print, as if someone had tried to strangle him. "What on Earth happened to you?" She asked him. "And where's your coat, you must be freezing!"

"No, actually, I'm fine." Danny told them, giving them both a sheepish grin, rubbing the back of his neck. He winced a little as he did so, pain from the bruise flaring up. "And this should be gone by morning, so don't worry about it. I hate to say it... but I've had worse."

"Bruises like that don't heal overnight." Tucker observed, remaining seated. "If anything, they get worse."

"Mine do." Danny told them. "If they didn't, I probably would have been sent to the hospital several times in the past four years."

"I'm taking a wild guess that this has something to do with what you want to show us." Tucker said, watching his friend carefully. In the back of his mind, Tucker couldn't help but find himself wondering if they really were speaking to Danny right now, or if Phantom was in control of the body. The person in front of them didn't seem any different from the normal Danny Fenton, but Tucker wasn't sure. He couldn't be sure exactly how deep this possession thing ran. Very briefly, the thought cropped into Tucker's head that Phantom might have already long since overtaken Danny Fenton completely, but it was too disturbing, and he erased it from his mind.

Then again, Danny did say that he and Phantom didn't have some kind of pact. That struck him as odd.

"It does." Danny said, then glanced at Sam. "Sam? You may, ah, actually want to follow Tucker's example here and sit down for this." He told her.

"Alright." Sam said, arching an eyebrow, compiling with him. She winced a little as she accidentally put more weight on her injured ankle than she had actually meant to, and quickly plopped down onto the bench next to Tucker as soon as she could, pausing for a moment to nurse said ankle.

"You need to be more careful of that thing." Danny said absently.

"I don't want to hear that from you." Sam said, arching an eyebrow. "Compared to the injures you've been getting, a twisted ankle is nothing."

"True enough." Danny gave them both a sheepish grin. "Still, I don't want to see you make it any worse. I heal quickly, you don't, Sam." He told her. Danny took a step back then, glancing between Tucker and Sam. Truth be told, although he had gotten held up by a sudden ghost attack, the other reason why he was so late was because he had checked to make sure that there was nobody else around, and that there was nothing in the area that could possibly record what he was about to do.

"So," Danny said, clapping his hands. "I'm assuming you guys want to know why I called you all the way out here, to this remote part of the park, where there are no other people." He told them. "It's because I need to show you guys something- something which, in retrospect, I _probably _should have showed you a long time ago." Looking at his two oldest friends in the world, he gave them a grave look. "And this is not to leave here, okay? That's why I picked this spot, because I don't want anyone else to see this. You can't tell anyone about what I'm about to show you- no matter what. If this does, despite what you said earlier, somehow color our relationship a bit differently... I want you guys to at least promise me that, out of consideration for our long years of friendship."

"Danny, come on man, giving you that cheesy spiel of a speech at lunch was bad enough, don't make me repeat it." Tucker frowned at him. "But we won't tell anyone, Danny. We promise."

"Same here." Sam said simply, locking gazes with Danny. "We trust you, Danny."

"Okay." Danny said, giving them a sheepish smile. "That means a lot to me guys, it really does. I've actually been worrying and debating about this a lot in the past four years." He confessed to them. "Like I've said, it's not that I don't trust you guys myself it's just that..." He frowned, searching for the right words for it. That was almost another lie though, he thought, there was some part of him that didn't trust them, not entirely. "It's just that it's sort of big."

_You really seem to believe that they'll accept you. Isn't that cute? Or then again, perhaps you __**don't-**__ isn't that why you spent the past twenty minutes checking out the area for surveillance equipment?_

_Shut up. _Danny mentally hissed back, doing his best not to let this show on his face. For now, he was just going to tell Tucker and Sam that he was Phantom, and he would worry about the 'possibly going crazy and/or evil' part later. Take things one at a time, Fenton, he told himself. If you tell them both things one right after the other, it might be too much for them, or they might get mixed signals, or they might get confused and not fully believe what he was about to tell and show them.

Suddenly realizing that he had just sort of been awkwardly standing there for the past minute, Danny flushed a little, clapping his hands again. "Right, okay, so here goes nothing." He told them, once again looking at them in an imploring manner. "Please, _please _don't freak out and hold all questions to the end."

Seeing his friends nod, Danny closed his eyes, taking in and letting out a deep breath- in a few seconds, he wouldn't be breathing at all, he thought grimly. It was a strange and chilling thing, experiencing death every time he transformed into Phantom. It was a clear reminder that he was no longer like everyone else he knew- who else was there who could so simply die and then come back to life in such a fashion?

Well, there _were_ two other people, but one was someone Danny didn't think he would ever understand, and he'd no idea where Dani even was at the moment. She sent him postcards sometimes, when she remembered, which wasn't always.

Letting the familiar rings of light form around his waist, Danny didn't even need his increased hearing to hear the gasps his friends made as they left Phantom in the place of their friend. He found himself unconsciously floating a little now that he was in Phantom form. Opening up his now bright green eyes, he gave them a sheepish smile. "Um, so you see, what I needed to tell you guys was that I'm Phantom. And because you two seem to be beating the wrong tree I should probably also tell you it's _just _me, and it's always been just me."

_Oh, just you, is it?_

Forcing himself to ignore the voice in his head, Phantom floated back down to the ground, making himself stand. It felt somewhat strange to do this in his Phantom form, seeing how lightweight it made him feel. He just couldn't help but want to float. Seeing that both Sam and Tucker were momentarily speechless, he winced. "Yeah, I know, it's kind of a lot to take in, isn't it?" He asked them. "You see, it all happened back at the start of high school, when I had that accident with the portal? You guys remember that, don't you?" He asked them, glancing between the two.

"Right well, best I can figure is that the huge electrical shock it gave me caused ectoplasm to more or less fuse with my DNA." Phantom went on to explain, wanting to fill this awkward silence with noise. "I-It, I mean it made me half ghost. If it hadn't I guess I'd be dead though, so well, there's that." He shrugged his shoulders. "I mean, _half_-dead is better than _all _dead, right?"

Silence still.

Phantom kicked the ground in front of him a little, shoving his hands inside of his pockets, glancing down at his boots. This wasn't good, he couldn't help but think, wasn't this _too much_ silence? "Um, would one of you mind saying something or- I mean, I understand if this is too much for you and you can't deal with it, and if it is, that's fine, and I'll just leave, and you'll never have to see me again." He paused. "I mean, you'll have to see me in school, and you'll probably pass me in the street, but you know I mean on like a personal level is what I mean. On a personal level, you will never have to see me again, if you don't want to. Because I can understand that if you think it's weird, I mean, I'm not entirely human any more so I can't exactly blame you..."

"So," Sam began, her words cutting off Phantom's rambling. "You're _not _possessed?"

"No, I'm not." Phantom told her. "I probably should have told you guys about this when it happened, but," He frowned, rubbing the back of his neck again. "...I was pretty scared. Of everyone's reactions. And of myself, I guess. I didn't understand anything that had happened to me. I sort of meant to tell you guys at several points in the past four years, but things kept on getting in the way. And since I figured you guys seemed to be getting close to the truth all on your own, I figured that it was pretty much now or never."

"Danny, we would have never rejected you because of this." Tucker said after a moment, his usual grin flashing on his face. "I mean, you have superpowers! How awesome _is _that?"

_Oh you cannot be serious. _Phantom heard his other half's voice speak up in his head, and could almost hear him roll his eyes. _Really? You just told them you're a freak of nature, and they're fine with that? How annoying._

_You know them just as well as I do. _Phantom mentally spoke back to the voice. _You should know them well enough to know that they would accept me. I mean, Sam and Tucker __**are **__my best friends. As much as I hate to admit it, you are some kind of part of me, so you should know what I know._

_I wonder if they would change their tunes if they knew about __**me, **__though._

Phantom couldn't help but flinch a little at that, though he tried to conceal it by looking down. He changed back into his human form then, and Danny's azure eyes peered up to meet those of his friends. "I-thanks, you two. I really, really should have told you about this earlier." He said, taking in and letting out a deep breath, clenching his fists. Should he go ahead and tell them about this now? It could very well be that the more time he wasted getting something done about this, the more time he would give this other side of him to grow.

"Danny?" Sam asked, peering up at him. "Is there something else you need to tell us?" She frowned. For someone who had supposedly just unloaded his biggest secret, Danny sure didn't exactly seem unburdened- in fact, it looked like he was now worried about something else, a much more serious matter.

"I-" Danny began, then frowned, shaking his head. "There's more, but I don't know how to say it yet." He confessed to them. "I need to get a grip on it myself before I can talk about it to anyone else, you know?" He gave them a sheepish look, but he now found himself unable to make eye contact with them.

_Chickened out, huh?_

"Are you sure you don't need to let it off your chest right now, dude?" Tucker asked him. "It looks kind of serious."

"No, no, it can wait for at least a little bit." Danny told them, finally meeting their eyes, slipping on a mask, one that said that 'everything was alright'. It must have been effective, because both of his friends seemed to accept it easily enough. "At any rate, you two look like you're about ready to freeze into popicicles! Why don't you guys head on home? I've still got some patrol to take care of." He told them.

"Do you do this every night, Danny?" Sam inquired.

"Pretty much, yeah." Danny said. "Someone has to keep Amity Park safe from ghosts, and I am sort of the person who turned on the Ghost Portal in the first place and let them all out."

"Yeah, but couldn't you leave it to the Red Hunter, or even to your parents for a change?" Tucker suggested. "Well, at least to your mom. I don't know if leaving your dad in charge of things is such a good idea. No offense."

"None taken." Danny told him, then shook his head. "No, this is something that I have to do. But I'll be fine."

"Your grades aren't fine." Sam noted. "Nor are your sleeping habits. You need to learn when to take a break every once in awhile Danny. We could even help you, you know?" She offered.

"Thanks for the offer, but ghost hunting is dangerous, and you two don't have any superhuman powers or ghost hunting know how to protect yourselves with." Danny told them, rejecting her offer. "I appreciate the offer though. And I mean, you guys can do other things to help- I could really use some people covering for me when I need to run away and go fight ghosts, you know. Someone to placate Mr. Lancer, if you would."

"We'll try." Tucker promised Danny, standing up. "Listen, Danny, why don't you teach us how to fight ghosts? I mean, if there's anyone here whose an expert, it's you. We really do want to help you, dude, and you look like you're stressing yourself out here. I'm no Jazz, but I'm pretty sure the levels of stress you're putting on yourself isn't good for your mental health."

_Too late for __**that **__piece of advice._

"I'll... think about it." Danny said after a moment. "At the very least, I can teach you and Sam some ways to protect yourselves against ghosts, in the event that anything like what happened with Skulker happens again." He glanced over at Sam then, a hint of guilt in his eyes surfacing. He quickly covered it though, knowing that if Sam knew that he was beating himself up over the fact that she had almost been used as bait to get to him, it would cause her pain. "Like say, _not _trying to kick the ghost wearing a metal battle suit."

"Never going to let that one go, are you Danny?" Sam asked, getting to her feet.

"Not for awhile, no." Danny shrugged his shoulders. "Do you, uh, need some help getting home, because I can fly right by your place if you need me too."

"No, no, I think it's probably best if I don't get dropped off at home two days in a row by Phantom." Sam told him, shaking her head. "And you have things to do, from the sound of it. Tucker will walk me home, won't you, Tucker?"

"Sure thing, Sam!" Tucker grinned at her. "You can lean on me." He turned back to Danny then. "But do seriously consider my suggestion. We want to help you in any way we can. We might not have super powers, but that doesn't exactly meant that we can't make ourselves useful."

"I will." Danny promised him. "Now you and Sam head on home before you both turn into ice sculptures. I have ice powers, and not fire powers, so I'm afraid I wouldn't be much help thawing either of you out if that turned out to be the case. Probably just make things worse, so don't plan on using me if you ever need body heat, either." He chuckled lightly. His own body temperature, even in human form, was low enough so that people would think he was hypothermic, one of the many reasons that Danny did everything he could to avoid trips to the doctor's or the hospital. He knew there were people with lower than average body temperatures, but he was pretty sure there was no way he could pass his own off as such a thing.

"Yeah, well, I guess we'll be seeing you tomorrow, Danny." Sam said, leaning a bit on Tucker. It sucked, not being able to use her right leg the way she wanted to, and she hoped her ankle would heal soon. At least it was only twisted, and not broken like she had thought it had been at first. Thankfully, her parents bought the story of it being an accident, even though they had learned later from one of her neighbors that she had been dropped off at the doorstep by Phantom, of all people. All she had to do was claim that Phantom had seen it happen, and had offered to take her home.

"Yeah, see you, Sam, Tucker." Danny waved at them, giving them both a small grin. He watched as they headed off, pausing for a moment, before he opened his mouth again. "Hey!" He called out after them. "I... it really does mean a lot to me that you guys are okay with all of this." He said, rubbing his arm, sheepish that he hadn't been able to trust them with this earlier. Why had he doubted them at all in the first place? Sure, there had always been an element of not wanting to get them involved- but there had always been more to it than just that.

"Like we said, Danny," Tucker glanced back at him, smiling. "We're your friends. We're not going to abandon you so easily. Although," he frowned, giving him a pointed look. "What was with that whole kidnapping the mayor thing? And the bank robberies?"

"Oh those." Danny laughed a little. "The first one was a set up, and the second one involved mind control. So long story short, not how they seemed at first. And the Axion Labs was just sort of an accident, but I guess I do sort of hold some sort of responsibility for that one." He told them, rubbing the back of his neck.

"Gotcha." Tucker said. "Don't stay out too late, Danny. You should try getting more sleep!" He advised him, before he and Sam headed off.

_Yes, you __**should **__get more sleep._

"You would like that, wouldn't you?" Danny asked, speaking freely now that Sam and Tucker had left. "Besides, it turns out you were wrong. Everything turned out fine." He said, crossing his arms, a triumphant look spreading across his face as he transformed into his Phantom form to begin his patrol.

_Providing that they were being honest._

"What do you mean by that?" Phantom asked, narrowing his eyes. "Of course they were. Sam and Tucker are my friends, they wouldn't lie to me. Not about something like this. They said they were fine with me being like this- Tucker even said it was cool."

_Hmph. So I suppose that only makes you the bad friend then, since you can't seem to __**stop **__lying to them._

"I-that's different." Phantom said quickly. "There are circumstances surrounding my lies, okay? Circumstances which you are not helping." He added, a grim look coming across his face. "You know I'm not going to let you win."

_You say that as if you assume this is some kind of game. More like, the inevitable future._

"It's _not."_ Phantom hissed.

_Well, it's fine for me if you want to keep deluding yourself in such a manner. I have all of the time in the world, after all. Eventually, I'll grow stronger than you, and our places will be switched. And then... _Phantom could almost hear the smirk in his other self's voice. _Then it will be only me. And what fun I'll have then._

"That is _not _going to happen." Phantom said, glowering, eyes blazing a brighter shade of green in his anger. "I don't know how you came to be, or why you're here, but I'm not going to be influenced by you. And I am most definitely not letting you have control of my body."

_You talk a good game, but you do know I can see and feel the same things you do. I know how filled with doubts you are. But it's amusing to see you try and hold up your front anyways._

"That's..." Phantom hesitated, knowing that he was right, as much as he hated to admit it. He winced then, upon hearing his other half's dark chuckling inside of his head, before it finally faded into blessed silence once more. "It's _not _going to happen." He repeated, clenching his fists, but from the expression on his face, it looked as if he was trying to convince himself of this fact, more than anyone else.

But if it did, what then? Phantom couldn't help but feel his thoughts start to stray into that area. If it did, if it happened, then he needed to take precautions. It wouldn't happen- it wouldn't- as much as he kept telling himself that, on the off chance that it did, Phantom didn't like the idea of not having some kind of back up plan. As much as he hated to admit this, he should probably give it some serious thought.

A wisp of blue mist escaping from his mouth however, cut such thoughts short. "Right. Duty calls. Thinking later." Even as he said that, though, the earliest bits of ideas began to float into his head.


	3. Black

Author's Note: Ehehehehe~ I'd nearly forgotten how much fun it is to right Black Danny. Hm, yes, fun indeed. Well, ya managed to drag another chapter out of me! Hopefully I can keep up this pace from now on, but no promises because I am apparently bad at promises.

Danny Phantom does not belong to me, as always~

* * *

White and Black

Chapter Three: Black

It was still a bit of a shock to her, to be honest.

To think that Danny Fenton, her best friend in all of the world, had been Phantom this whole time. He had been spending the past four years, fighting off ghosts and ghost hunters alike, all on his own. No wonder he seemed so messed up all the time, no wonder he was lacking sleeping and often missed school. It explained everything, and now that she knew the truth, Sam couldn't help but wonder how she had missed it all of this time.

She was barely able to get to sleep that night, thinking over what she knew now. She had drifted off eventually, though she wasn't sure when, but it must have been late. She felt anything but well rested when she got up, and she couldn't help but wonder if this was how Danny felt all of the time. Maybe she should try and find chances for him to doze off during the day, he looked like he needed it.

Really, she was frankly amazed that Danny hadn't broken down even once during the past four years. Not only was what he was doing incredibly dangerous and risky, but it was also extremely time consuming, and cut into every aspect of his life. Honestly, Sam couldn't help but wonder if it was even _worth _it. Then again, Sam knew Danny well enough to know that mere words wouldn't convince him of this, and that perhaps there was really no way to convince him that he didn't have to do this. That was the sort of person Danny was after all- Jazz would have probably told her it was something like a hero complex.

Which was why Sam would spend today convincing Danny to let her and Tucker help him. Somehow, she got the impression last night that he wasn't too keen on Tucker's suggestion, and she doubted he would follow through on his promise without some prompting on their part. She figured Tucker felt the same way as well. They were his best friends, the very least they could do was try and take some of the burden off of Danny's back, and allow him to get some of his life back.

"Right." Sam nodded her head, taking in and letting out a deep breath. Glancing over at the alarm clock, however, caused Sam's jaw to drop, and she swore underneath her breath. It was already well into first period! Where were her parents, and why hadn't they woken her up? "Argh, damnit! The last thing I need to do today is to be late- but I already am late." She hissed, all but throwing herself out of bed, and instantly regretting the action afterwards, landing hard on her injured ankle.

Stringing together a rather colorful list of swears, she rubbed her ankle. She wasn't going to heal any time soon at this rate. Limping her way through her morning routine as fast as she could, she stormed down the stairs, to find her mother in the kitchen. They had thought she hadn't been feeling well, and were letting her sleep, thinking she was going to be spending the day at home. Upon learning that this wasn't the case, and that she had just overslept, her father jumped up and grabbed his car keys, hurrying the girl out the door with promises that he would see to it that her absence in first period would be excused.

She wondered if Tucker had slept any better during the drive. He probably had, knowing him as she did. Very little kept Tucker up at night.

"Thanks for the ride, dad." Sam said, stepping out of the car as they arrived at school. "I'll see you after school." She told him, yawning a little.

"Well I can't let my daughter walk to school on an injured ankle, now can I?" The man said, shaking his head. "Have a good day at school, sweetie, I'll go talk to the people in the attendance office for you. Do you need me to pick you up after school again?" He asked.

"No thanks, I think I'm going over to Danny's after school. At least, I hope so." Sam said.

Jeremy Manson arched an eyebrow. "Well, that's something you haven't done in awhile." He said. He was sort of hoping that Sam would eventually drift away from the Fenton kid, but he supposed he was wrong. "Well, have fun I suppose." He told her, before letting her go.

Sam made it to second period just fine, which was a class she shared with Danny and Tucker. It was strange, not always being in the same classes anymore. They had been during the first two years of high school, but now they only had two classes where the whole lot of them were together. Beyond that, Sam had another class with Tucker, and another with Danny. It was sort of lonely, actually, when she didn't see either of them around.

"Sam!" Danny looked up, there on time for once. She smiled at him as she took her seat next to him. She took note of the bandage wrapped around his neck, where the hand print shaped bruise had been last night. She guessed it hadn't healed already. "I was starting to think you wouldn't show up today." He said, a hint of nervousness in his voice, as if he thought she had been avoiding him on purpose. "I was a little worried." He confessed.

"No, I just overslept." Sam told him. "My parents thought I was sick, apparently, so they didn't wake me up when my alarm clock failed to go off." She shook her head. "I'm fine, aside from the ankle. That's still pretty sore. Sure learned my lesson though, huh?" She joked, not wanting Danny to feel bad about the ankle. "Do not kick things wearing metal battle suits."

"Probably good advice." Tucker nodded, taking his seat behind Sam. "So are we going to be able to come over to your place or not tonight Danny?"

"Tonight?" Danny blinked, then groaned. "Oh, right. I guess I can work something out, though I make no promises." He told them, laughing a little, though there was a bitter tone to it. "Ghosts don't _exactly _plan their attacks at my convenience."

"Well, I hope they do today, because I am not letting you off the hook this time, dude." Tucker said. "You need help, I can tell that much."

Danny grimaced, still having hoped to be able to talk Tucker and Sam out of this. He got the feeling that they were both going to be pretty stubborn on the matter, so the least he could do was to ensure that they didn't get themselves hurt when they encountered a ghost. "Fine, I know that." He said shortly.

Sam smiled at him, placing a hand on his. "We just want to help you, Danny."

Danny flushed a little at the sudden contact, feeling his heart speed up inside of his chest. "Yeah well... I know that. It's just that I'm worried the two of you don't understand exactly what it is you're trying to get yourselves involved in."

_You're just worried they'll learn about me if they try to help you._

There was that flinch again, Sam noted, she could feel Danny's whole body twitch. "Which is why we'll back off and keep our heads down when you tell us to, Danny." Sam promised him. "We're not stupid, you know."

"Yeah, we have a sense of danger." Tucker told him. "Don't worry about it, dude. You're pretty good at this whole superhero thing, but even superheroes have people that have their backs."

"That's true, I guess." Danny admitted. "Look, I really am sorry though that I didn't say anything about this to you guys earlier. I probably should have told you right after I had the accident." He told them. "I think that was my biggest mistake, to be honest."

_How could that have been a mistake? It created me, after all._

"Yeah well, it's not like I can't understand, dude." Tucker said, keeping his voice low. "I was convinced that you were being possessed by Phantom until you told us the truth. We might have not understood it back at the time. What matters is that you've told us now, and decided to stop lying to us."

"As much as I hate to admit it, because it makes what I am sound even stranger, but I can't blame you, Tucker." Danny said. "Possession sounds a lot more realistic than being half ghost. To be honest, I haven't quite figured it out myself yet." He told them, frowning. "And yeah, I know, and I'm sorry for lying to the both of you for so long. It was bad of me, and I hated to do it. I just... I just didn't want to get the two of you involved in all the fighting. It's not exactly any fun."

"There have to be some upsides of having ghost powers though." Tucker said.

"Oh, some." Danny laughed. "Being able to fly is pretty nice, I'll admit that. And I never have to worry about getting locked out of the house, so there's that."

"Isn't it rough with your parents being ghost hunters?" Sam asked him.

"Boy is it ever." Danny rolled his eyes. "They mean well, but they have no idea, and I don't intend to ever tell them either. They're not like you guys, after all, they keep talking about how if they ever catch a ghost- specifically Phantom these days, that they'll tear it apart molecule by molecule and then study the remains. Not exactly encouraging."

Sam and Tucker both winced. No wonder Danny seemed so stressed out all the time, if that was the sort of thing he had to put up with at home. "They are your parents though, dude." Tucker said after a moment. "I'm sure they'd be okay with it if you told them you were half-ghost."

"Yeah well, that's a nice sentiment, Tuck, but I'm not going to put my money on it." Danny told him, frowning deeply. "All ghosts are evil to them, and furthermore, Phantom is still Public Ghost Enemy Number One. There's no way they would just so easily accept the truth." He told him. "I just don't want to take that chance. For both them and myself. Can you imagine how broken hearted they would be to learn the truth? And even if they were fine with it, they've been hunting me for the past four years, don't you think that might you know, get to them a little?"

"I hate to admit it, but he sort of has a point." Sam chimed in. "Better safe than sorry, right? I imagine it took him a lot of courage to tell us in the first place."

"Yeah." Danny told them, yawning a little. "So, I guess the two of you can come over to my house after school today, provided nothing gets in the way." He said. "The least I can do is convince my parents to give the both of you an ecto-gun or something like that. I'm sure they'd be more than happy to teach you how to use one if they knew it was for your own protection. They won't give them out to just anyone, but if it's you two, I imagine they will."

"They gave you your own, right?" Sam asked. "Not that you really need it."

"Yeah, they did." Danny quirked a small grin. "And it's come in handy sometimes, I'll admit. It's useful when I can't go ghost right away."

"Sounds like it." Tucker said, glancing up as the class began. "We'll talk about this more later Danny. You now how Mrs Black hates students who talk in class. The last thing you need is more detention, dude."

"Tell me about it." Danny rolled his eyes. "Although lately it just feels like some of the teachers have given up on even trying to give me detentions. Which is both a relief and actually really kind of depressing." He told them.

"Not Mr. Lancer." Sam observed, shaking her head. "He's always getting on your case, isn't he? We can help you with that, you know, if you let us." She added.

"That... that would actually be nice." Danny said, considering this. "It would be a huge relief to have someone cover for me for once. It would make things a whole lot easier. There's only so many times you can use the 'cafeteria meatloaf' excuse, after all." He rolled his eyes.

"I was always wondering why you kept eating that time after time." Tucker laughed. "Well, we've got your back, Danny, don't worry. Whether the teachers believe our excuses, now that is something I can't guarantee. But we'll sure try."

"Thanks you two." Danny gave them a weak smile. "I mean, _really_- thanks."

* * *

"Why, if it isn't both Sam and Tucker!" Jack Fenton declared, grinning from ear to ear as the pair stepped into the Fenton household. "I feel like I haven't seen the two of you here together in months! I was starting to worry Danny had done something stupid and had made the two of you angry."

"Not at all, Mr. Fenton." Sam gave him a small smile, waving her hand at him. "We've just been pretty busy! I mean, senior year and all that, right? We've got college coming up ahead of us!"

"Ah yes, college." Jack nodded his head, a nostalgic look on his face. "Say, have I ever told you kids about my college days?" He asked them, face brightening, and both Sam and Tucker flinched. He had, in fact, told them about his college days- it was one of four things that he would blather on and on about, along with ghosts, fudge, and his wife.

And they sure didn't need to hear about the old 'glory days' for the fifth time.

"That's okay, dad." Danny interrupted, to the relief of his friends. "We were actually going up to my room to do some homework, so you know." He laughed. "Got to get cracking on that."

_If there's one thing I __**don't **__need to hear again._

For _once_, Danny actually found himself agreeing with his other half.

"Aw, that's too bad!" Jack frowned, visibly disappointed that he wouldn't be able to take another trip down memory lane. If only his father knew, Danny thought, that his best friend from college actually hated him- he couldn't help but wonder if he would change his mind about college being his 'glory days'.

Danny of course, never had the heart to tell him that. That, and there was the fact that if he exposed Vlad, Vlad would expose him too. And with his mental state the way it was now- well, maybe now wouldn't be the best time to let his parents know that he was half ghost.

"Later, Mr. Fenton!" Tucker waved enthusiastically to the large man as they headed upstairs to Danny's room. Danny closed the door behind them, locking it firmly. "Wow, here's a place I haven't been in a long time!" Tucker observed, glancing around. "I didn't even realize how much I missed this place!"

Danny laughed, sounding a little sheepish as he rubbed the back of his neck. "Yeah, sorry about that. I didn't actually really mean to drift away from the two of you. It... just sort of happened, what with all of the responsibilities I've had heaped on me lately."

"To be fair Danny, the one doing the heaping is you." Sam observed, glancing over at him. She noted that the trash filled with bandages from the other day were gone, and she wondered briefly how he disposed of them in a way that his parents never managed to notice. At least, Sam figured Danny's parents never noticed how often he was getting hurt, because she couldn't imagine them not doing something about it. "Nobody is making you do any of this."

"It doesn't matter who is doing the heaping." Danny said, shaking his head. "I've already accepted this as my responsibility, and I can't just back down from it now. Not when I've already come this far."

Tucker snorted. "And Mr. Lancer tries to say you have no sense of responsibility. Ah, if only he knew." He shook his head.

"Yeah, well, he's not gonna know." Danny shot him a glare.

"Chill dude." Tucker held up his hands. "I know that. Nobody's getting anything from me."

Danny gave him a small smile, before he headed over to his bed. "Well, I did promise you guys some things to protect yourself, so..." he said, yanking out a steel briefcase from underneath it, a combination lock on it. "Sometimes Phantom ah, acquires Fenton tech that looks like it might come in handy. Some of it I keep." He told them, before unlocking the suitcases. "My parents, of course, would never suspect to look underneath their son's bed for the stuff." He laughed.

"You steal from your parents?" Sam asked, quirking an eyebrow.

"I don't exactly want to hear a lecture on respecting my parents from you, Sam." Danny said, peering up at her. "Anyways, let's see here..." He turned his attention away from them, pulling out two ecto-guns, tossing one each the way of his friends. Sam easily caught hers, but Tucker had to scramble after his after it slipped out of his fingers, and shot the other two a look when they laughed at him.

"Sorry, sorry." Danny laughed. "You'll have to do something about your coordination if you're planning on helping me, Tuck." He advised him, before he pulled out two metallic belts. "Specter Deflectors." He told them, before handing them one each. "When turned on, they're designed to deflect all things ghostly. When in doubt, they'll keep you safe."

"And totally clash with my outfit while doing it." Sam observed dryly, but she stuffed it into her backpack alongside the ecto-gun.

"Well I think it looks cool." Tucker said, placing them similarly in his own. "Got any other nifty gadgets, Danny?"

"Just the Fenton Phones." Danny said, pulling out two pairs of neon green ear buds. "They're supposed to block out spectral noise. Would have come in handy for the two of you to have during that whole Ember craze." He said, rolling his eyes.

"Ugh, please don't remind me about the Ember phase." Sam shuddered. "I was trying to forget about that."

"We're all trying to forget about that." Tucker added, nodding his head. "On the plus side, it was the first time that I was able to talk to Paulina and Star without them thinking I was a weirdo."

"Yeah, all it took was for them to be brainwashed by a wannabe rock star." Sam teased. "I'm still a little surprised that she turned out to be a ghost in the end though. I almost didn't believe it when I heard it." She laughed, shaking her head. "Then again, ghostly influence is probably the only thing that could actually make me want to listen to that kind of music."

"Hey, I liked her song!" Tucker protested.

"So we noticed. We had to put up with your off key version of it all that week." Danny observed, shutting the briefcase and shoving it back underneath the bed. "Anyways, I recommend that you keep that stuff on you as much as possible. Never know when you might need it. Ghosts will pretty much attack at any time." Even as he told them this, a foreboding feeling rose in his chest, followed shortly after by a wisp of blue mist escaping from his lips, and he heaved a sigh.

"Like now for example." He told them, shaking his head. "You guys are free to hang out in here and do your homework if you like. It'd look a little weird if I rushed you out all of a sudden. With any luck, I'll be back in a few minutes. I'd invite you to come with me, but if someone's not in here when my parents come to check on us..."

"We get it Danny." Sam said. "Don't worry, we'll hold down the fort for you. That's something we can do for you as well."

"Thanks Sam." Danny gave her a quick grin, before a flash of light transformed him into his Phantom form. "Hopefully it'll be quick." He said, before he vanished from sight, presumably to look for the ghost that had set off his senses.

"Okay I have to admit." Tucker said, grinning from ear to ear. "That's pretty cool."

* * *

Thankfully, Danny's instincts had been right on the mark for once, and he had come back within ten minutes of leaving. It was the Box Ghost, he told him, and catching the Box Ghost was something he could do in his sleep by now.

Although, from the looks of the bags underneath his eyes, Sam wasn't so sure that Danny _was _sleeping.

It was a silent worry, one that she had kept to herself. It was probably just because he was so busy with ghost hunting and trying to be a student, that he just sort of used up most of his sleeping time, she told herself. But somehow, Sam knew there was more to it than that. There was something Danny wasn't telling them, something more.

It was in the bags underneath his eyes and the way he flinched suddenly on occasion, as if someone had said something that had gotten to him. But nobody had said anything at all, as if he were hearing some kind of voice that only he could hear. Tucker hadn't really seemed to have noticed, and she didn't bring it up with him. Maybe it was just some kind of nervous habit, she told herself, no doubt Danny's stress levels were high.

Now that they were helping him, Sam was sure Danny would not only be able to catch up on his sleep and his schoolwork, but he would also be able to destress a little. He would go back to the normal Danny that she had become accustomed to- well, as normal as one could get when they had ghost powers, at least.

All was quiet in the Manson house. The servants had gone home for the night, and her parents and grandmother were fast asleep. The silence didn't bother Sam much, but tonight there was just something so downright eerie about it. The fact that she couldn't sleep really wasn't helping much. After several minutes of tossing and turning in her bed, she heaved a sigh, sitting up.

Well, it was obvious she wasn't going to get much sleep tonight. Two sleepless nights in a row- she was starting to understand how Danny must have felt.

Groaning, she swung her legs over the bed, cautious of her injured ankle. She pulled on some stockings and grabbed a jacket, before lacing up her combat boots and grabbing some house keys. Maybe a nice walk around the block would clear her head a little and allow her to get some rest. Carefully, she shut the door behind her, not wanting to alert anyone to the fact that she was leaving this late at night. She knew her parents would throw a fit.

"It's cold as balls out here." She mumbled, shivering a little as she pulled her coat closer to her, quickly zipping it up. What she wouldn't give for Danny's resistance to the cold. That probably saved him a lot of money on buying coats and other winter gear.

Ever since she had learned about Danny being Phantom, there were all sorts of unpleasant thoughts churning in Sam's mind. And as much as she hated to admit it, there were doubts. Was the Danny now _really _the same Danny from four years ago? It wasn't really that Phantom had overwritten her friend, had it? Danny had changed, Sam thought, but she was mostly sure he was still overall the same person that she had known all of her life.

Mostly.

She wondered if Danny had doubts, worries, concerns about the way he had become. Probably he did, she thought. Being half ghost meant that he was technically half dead, didn't it? How did that even work? Was it frightening each time he turned into a ghost, when he stopped breathing and his heart stopped beating? Or did Danny not even notice anymore. Which form felt more like the real him to Danny? The ghost, or the human?

What exactly was he planning on doing with his future?

Sam wasn't sure if it was the cold wind or the chilling thought that Danny might one day give up his human life entirely to devote himself to ghost fighting that chilled her to the bone.

"Should have brought some gloves." She mumbled as she continued her trudge down the sidewalk. "This was a crappy idea. I should have just surfed the Internet." She mumbled, rubbing her hands together. She paused then, looking up to the sky.

"Oh, snow." She said, unable to help smiling a little. Sure enough, tiny white flecks of snow were starting to come down, dancing in and out of visibility as they passed through the lamp light. With a bit of childlike glee, she reached her hands out, catching a few snowflakes in them, which promptly melted in her hands. Her smile grew a little, suddenly recalling memories of snowball fights past, and decided that next time they got in one, she was going to team up with the guy with ice powers.

A shadow broke Sam out of her thoughts, and she glanced upwards. Someone else was out this late at night? Straining her eyes, she tried to focus on the darkened figure some ways up the street from her. Narrowing her eyes, she frowned. "...Danny?" She said aloud, as if she were rather uncertain herself. "What's he doing out this late?" She asked, then rolled her eyes.

"Ghosts, duh." She shook her head. She wondered if she could catch up with him, and without really thinking all that hard about it, she found herself trying to catch up with him. It was slow going, as she carefully made her way across the icy sidewalk, careful not to irritate her ankle. The closer she got though, the stranger things seemed to her. Something seemed off, but she couldn't put her finger on it.

Maybe it wasn't Danny? No, the closer she got, the more the back of the figure looked like him. She couldn't mistake that scraggly looking mess of black hair for anyone else. It was a bit odd that he would be out this late at night in his human form, she thought to herself- if he were hunting ghosts, why wasn't he in his Phantom form? Was he trying to lie low or something?

Or maybe he was just taking a walk himself, she reasoned. There was no reason to think something was wrong with him just because he was out this late at night- after all, so was she!

Did he usually dress in such dark colors, though? She honestly couldn't remember the last time she had seen Danny wearing black. At least not, to the extent of being fully clothed in it. Something about it seemed strangely off to her.

"Danny?" Sam called out when she got close enough, now suddenly uncertain.

Danny froze in his tracks, and a chill rushed up Sam's spine. He hadn't done anything, he had just stopped walking, so why was she suddenly shaking? It was as if all of a sudden, the air about them had suddenly changed, growing heavy and stagnant. And colder- it was colder, now that she thought about it. Maybe it was just the fact that it was snowing, and yet...

"You're out awfully late Sam." Danny observed, not yet turning around. There was something strange about his voice as well, some quality to it that hadn't been there before. It wasn't the ghostly echo of his Phantom form, rather something other, something that shouldn't be there. "Can't sleep or something?" He asked her, peering over his shoulder.

"S-something like that." Sam said, stumbling over her words. "What about you? Is there a ghost or something around?"

"Aside from me?" Danny joked, but even that somehow didn't manage to comfort her. He turned around, grinning at her, but there was an alien quality to it, and his face was at once familiar and unrecognizable.

"Y-yeah." Sam stammered, rubbing her hands against her arms. It really had gotten colder.

Then she saw them.

His eyes.

Without thinking, she took a step back, letting out a hiss of pain as she put weight on her injured ankle. Even as she bit back the pain though, she found that it helped her focus a little more, and she wished it hadn't for now she knew the reason that her heart was pounding so heavily in her chest.

This wasn't Danny.

Not _her _Danny.

He wore his face, shared his mannerisms, but this wasn't Danny Fenton. It was someone else entirely. When the friendly grin on his face transformed into an amused smirk, she knew this for sure.

And then there were the eyes, the dark red eyes. They weren't crimson, like she had seen on other ghosts- they were a shade deeper, darker. And _wrong_, so very wrong, silted like a snake's, a predatory gaze within them.

"Who are you?" Sam asked, wishing suddenly that she had thought to bring some of the ghost hunting equipment Danny had given her.

"Who am I?" This other person who looked like Danny, but wasn't Danny, no wasn't Danny, couldn't have been Danny, smirked, eyes seeming to glow brighter as his amused smirk seemed to grow. "That hurts, Sam. Can't you recognize your own best friend?" He asked, placing a hand on his chest. "How cruel."

"Lies!" Sam spat out, taking another step backwards, for the moment, ignoring her throbbing ankle. "There's no way you could by Danny! He doesn't make faces like that! You're wrong!"

"Hm." The fake Danny frowned, shrugging his shoulders a little. "Well, you're right and you're wrong, Sammie." He said, taking a step forward. Even the way he moved was wrong. "I am Danny Fenton, but I guess I could say I'm also a lot better than him."

"That's not true either." Sam said, taking another step back. There was a rising scream inside of her body, as every muscle begged her to run, but her brain told her not to take her eyes off the person in front of her. "You're something bad."

"I suppose that's true too." The person who claimed himself as Danny shrugged his shoulders, looking unhurt by her words- rather he looked pleased, that damnable smirk remaining firmly on his face- _Danny's_ face- distorting the face Sam knew. "But that's so much better!" He said, suddenly grinning from ear to ear. In a flash, he vanished, and a cold hand was placed on Sam's shoulder. "After all, it makes a man feel so much more free."

Sam whirled around, now face to face with the scarlet eyed Danny. "What have you done with Danny?" She yelled at him, balling her hands into fists.

"Done?" He laughed a little, a short, sharp bark of laughter. "Nothing for the moment. He's just asleep." He said. "Finally fell asleep. Not even he can stay awake forever." He laughed again, a rather smug look on his face. "He tries to stay awake you know, so that I don't have a chance to come out and play. And it's so very _boring_."

"Well." He rolled his shoulders back, tilting his head to the side, a glimmer of madness in his eyes as he locked them with Sam's. "It won't stay like that for much longer. I'm winning, you see."

"What do you mean?" Sam asked, glaring at him. Was this the real reason that Danny always looked tired, and why he always seemed to act like someone was talking to him? It fit, she thought, and she didn't like it. Why hadn't he told them about this too? From the sound of it, it seemed as if this was a recent development, and it was unmistakably important.

"Why ask that when you already understand?" He asked her, quirking a brow- and there was that smirk again, that blasted smirk, the kind of expression Danny would never make. "I can tell it from the look in your eyes, Sam. You can't hide anything from me. Including... certain feelings that mister clueless can't manage to pick up on. Isn't that a shame?" He asked her, before seemingly dissolving into a mist.

Sam spun around again, anticipating that he would once again appear behind her, but she wasn't exactly fast enough. This other Danny caught her wrists, grinning as she struggled to break free of his grasp. He was strong! Somehow Sam had never really realized that Danny had become this strong. "Let me go!" She spat, grunting from the effort this caused her. A twinge of fresh pain ran through her again as the struggle bothered her ankle, which she bit back.

And the other Danny seemed delighted, his eyes twinkling as the pain crossed through Sam's eyes. "No, I don't think so." He said, leaning in close, so close that their noses nearly touched. "You see, we're the same, he and I, for the most part. It's just that we're a bit different in various important areas." He laughed a little. "You're a beautiful girl Sam, and it's wasted on someone too naive to appreciate that. Meanwhile, I could appreciate it all the time!" He said, smiling, and for a sick moment, his expression settled back into one that Sam had come to expect from her Danny.

"I wouldn't want you." Sam said, glowering at him. "You and Danny are not the same. I don't care about your feelings."

"That hurts, you know." He pouted, but for all that, he didn't seem very upset. "Trample on a person's feelings that way. Then again," he smirked, all semblance to the real Danny gone, "...you act as if you've got some choice in the matter. See, Sam, soon enough it's just going to be me in here. Won't that be fun?" He asked her. "I think I'll really liven this dull town up."

"There's no way Danny would lose to you." Sam said lowly.

"You make it sound as if he even stands a chance." He observed, raising his brows. "You see, not even the reassurance of his two friends accepting him for who and what he is has stopped me from coming out the moment he lets his guard down. Do you really think he can stop the inevitable?"

"Besides that Sam, you're being awfully harsh on someone you just met. You're not even going to try and give me a chance?" He asked. "I could really let you experience some interesting things."

"I don't think I want to learn about your definition of interesting." Sam said, her eyes narrowing and teeth clenching. In a last ditch effort to get away from him, she kneed him in the stomach, temporarily knocking the wind out of him and causing him to let go of her. With no time to worry about how badly she was going to destroy her already injured ankle, she turned and sprinted down the street, dashing for her house. It was still in view, she hadn't walked far, if she could just get home and get to the Specter Deflector...

Her thoughts however were cut off as she was suddenly grabbed from behind, a cold hand planted over her mouth and another, firmly around her waist. "Ahh~ That's awfully mean of you Sam. Aren't we friends?" The other Danny asked, holding her so tightly that she had to fight to breathe. She gasped for air when she let her go for a moment, spinning her around to face him, but she didn't have much time to catch her breath because in the end, he did the worst thing she could think of.

Clasping her wrists together with one hand, he placed the other on her upper back and leaned down, planting a frozen kiss on her lips. A rush of anger flooded Sam's body, and to her horror, there was also a vague, internal delight at the thought of finally being kissed by Danny, hormones responding in a way that her brain was screaming at them for doing so. Sure, she wanted Danny to one day return the feelings she had for him, but she didn't want this one to!

In retaliation, Sam bit down on his tongue, which had invaded her mouth, hard enough to draw blood (was she ever going to have to apologize to her Danny later, who she was sincerely hoping she would see again at this point). It got the other Danny to pull back sure enough but his grip on her wrists tightened, and her actions on served to annoy him.

"That wasn't very nice, Sam." He hissed, eyes blazing fury, and Sam could feel his fingernails digging into her skin. "I like seeing people struggle as much as the next guy, but if anyone's going to be doing any biting here, it's going to be me." He said, forcing her closer to him.

"Let go of me." Sam hissed again, her voice low, anger boiling within her. Treating her like this was one thing, but doing it while wearing Danny's face was unforgivable.

"Great Gatsby!" There was a sharp shout from one of the windows of the house that stood aside from them. A face popped out that Sam though she would never be happy to see. "What on Earth are the two of you doing out here so late at night? Don't you know what time it is? And it's a school night!" Mr. Lancer paused then, getting a better look at the situation, and frowned. "Are you... alright down there, Miss Manson?"

The shift in Danny's behavior was sudden and distressing, as the other Danny so easily slipped into mimicking the real one. He released Sam's wrists, and laughed a little. "Sorry Mr. Lancer. We were having a bit of a fight, that's all." He said, rubbing the back of his neck, acting so convincing, Sam was half wondering if he'd returned to normal. A scarlet eyed glance back towards her, however, confirmed the truth. "I guess it got a little out of hand. Sorry Sam." He apologized.

"Well, very well." Mr. Lancer frowned, still thinking something odd was going on here. "Still, it's past one in the morning. The two of you should be in bed. Especially you, Mr. Fenton." He said, pointing towards him. "No wonder you're always falling asleep in class if you're out roaming the streets at night. Go home and go to bed."

"Will do, sir!" The other Danny said, as Mr. Lancer shut his window, and the moment he did so, a change came over him once again, his eyes blazing as they narrowed, his entire body radiating anger. "Ah, what a shitty old man, he ruins everything." He glanced back at Sam, giving her a twisted grin. "You heard the man, Sam. A little girl should run back home and hide under her covers."

"I'm not afraid of you." Sam said, though she knew it was a bitter lie. There was a part of her, though she was hiding it very well- or she thought she was, at any rate, that was very much afraid of him. Afraid of what he could do. "I'm not going to let you do as you please with Danny's body."

"Ah but you see." The other Danny's eyes glimmered. "This is my body as well. I can do whatever I like with it. But if you think you can stop me, then you're welcome to try, Sam. After all," he said, starting to fade away into the darkness, leaving only the scarlet eyes glowing. "Watching the two of you struggle desperately sounds fun."

He was gone then, vanished, taking the heavy and stagnant air with him. It was all Sam could do to keep from collapsing on her knees, suddenly feeling the fear she had been bottling up come over her. She steadied herself, gripping her arms tightly with her hands and pulling them towards her chest, trying to steady the frantic beating of her heart.

"Why didn't you say anything sooner?" She asked aloud, cold tears trickling down her cheeks. "What were you _thinking_, Danny?"

Then again, how did one even begin to tell their friends that they might have been slowly losing their mind?


	4. Violet

Author's Note: Chapter Four~! Things are progressing at a much nicer pace. One of the things I really didn't like about the first version of this story (as well as with many older stories) was the pacing. It felt too quick, too rapid, and things were forgotten too easily. That was why I decided to rewrite this fic, instead of just continuing on with the original, I thought it would end up with better results.

As always, Danny Phantom is not mine~. Please read and review, if you would be so kind!

* * *

White and Black

Chapter Four: Violet

Sam found her gaze flickering apprehensively towards the school building as it came into view. Her father had insisted on driving her again- especially after he had caught a glimpse at the bags underneath her eyes. Although her left ankle had begun to heal, he seemed to be afraid that she would slip on a patch of ice in her exhaustion, and do something worse to it. She couldn't entirely blame him.

She'd been unable to sleep once she had gotten back home. Of course she had.

She still wanted desperately to dismiss last night's encounter as some kind of a bad dream. She hadn't met Danny last night, and he hadn't become a different person, that was only a nightmare, right? But the bruise around her wrist, in the shape of a hand print, was telling her otherwise. She'd covered it up with a long sleeved shirt and some fingerless gloves, not wanting eyebrows to be raised and wrong questions to be asked.

She really didn't want to go to school today.

But she knew that she had to.

Because she knew she had to talk to Danny. The _real _Danny, not the one that she had met last night, not whoever- _whatever_- that was. She needed him to come clean to her, about everything.

She was scared. She was so very, very scared for Danny. Having that thing, that other person, creeping about in his mind, walking about in his body at night- what was she supposed to do about it? She found herself looking up all kinds of psychology websites in the middle of the night, but she'd been too tired to really understand any of it. After awhile, it had all just started to blend together, and she couldn't even tell you if what she had been reading about was schizophrenia, or dissociative identity disorder, or bipolar people.

She wondered how Jazz managed to keep track of it all.

Sam had thought about calling Jazz, but a phone call in the middle of the night from her brother's best friend? She couldn't help but think it would be suspicious, and she had no idea exactly how much Jazz knew about Danny and his secrets. She had to assume that she knew nothing, and she didn't want the girl to start asking questions or race to alert her parents about the possibility of something serious troubling their son. For all she knew, the Fenton's bumbling attempts to help Danny might only make everything worse. They would probably jump right on the whole possession idea that she and Tucker had earlier, and would run with it.

Whatever was going on with Danny, it wasn't as simple as that.

She had thought about calling Tucker, alerting to him what was going on, and holding a strategy meeting about what to do. And while she hadn't dismissed that idea entirely, she knew in her heart that the first thing she needed to do, before anything else, was to talk to Danny.

She just hoped he would be in school today.

"Thanks for the lift, dad!" Sam said, doing her best to put on a cheerful face for him- but apparently, she had overshot it, because her father only gave her a worried look.

"Are you sure you're alright, Sammie?" He asked, peering at her from his rolled down window. "If you aren't feeling well, it's perfectly fine to stay home you know. You don't need to force yourself to go to school."

"I'm feeling fine, I promise." Sam assured him. "Just a little tired. We all have our sleepless nights from time to time, don't we?"

Her father's frown only deepened, but he wasn't going to argue with his daughter about this- not yet at least. "Well, alright." He said. "Have a nice day at school today, Sammie."

"I will." Sam promised him with a smile, which she only let drop once he was well out of sight. Taking in and letting out a deep breath, she limped her way into Casper High.

"Please let him be here." She mumbled underneath her breath, eyes darting around furiously as she looked for his moppy mess of black hair. "And please let his eyes be blue." She could barely hear herself mumble.

And then there he was, as if her very words had summoned him. Early, for once, it seemed, leaning back against the wall of his locker, looking as if he were lost in thought. And his eyes, his eyes were a blessed blue, as bright as the clear sky.

But troubled.

Sam thought she understood why, now.

"Sam!" He called out to her, breaking his chain of thoughts. A smile broke over his face, and Sam could nearly weep, for it was the one that she knew. "Look, I got here before you for once." He said, laughing a little. From the way he was acting, it didn't seem as if he had any idea what the other him had done last night, nor did he have any idea that they had met last night at all.

Suddenly, Sam felt the overwhelming urge to keep it that way. Surely if he knew that she knew, that smile on his face would be wiped away in an instant.

But she had to. If she let Danny carry on this way, surely he would only destroy himself. And she didn't want that, she didn't want that other Danny- that _Black _Danny to take his place, which she knew would happen. What would happen then? She couldn't imagine it would be anything good.

"Danny." She said slowly, meeting eyes with him. "We need to talk."

He blinked at this, frowning a little. "About what?" He asked her. "Is something wrong? Maybe some ghosts bothering you?" He asked and then he froze in his tracks, his eyes going wide, all of the color draining from his face.

_She's a really good kisser, you know._

"N-no." Danny stammered out loud, much louder than he intended. People in the halls stopped, pausing what they were doing to see what the source of this sudden outburst was. "T-that." He stammered again, taking a step back from Sam, his expression one of absolute horror, his body trembling.

"Danny!" Sam's voice broke him out of it, as well as her firm hand on his wrist. "Danny, please, it's okay. We need to talk. Please don't run away from me Danny, please don't." She almost begged him. "I want to help you. You _need _help."

For awhile, it seemed as if he were still frozen, his expression still one of abject horror- and then his shoulders slumped, tension rushing out of his body. "I know." He said, and his voice was barely above a whisper. "I think I'm losing my mind."

"We can't talk here." Sam said. "But this can't wait, either."

"I know." Danny said dumbly, before taking in and letting out a deep breath. He tried his best, his utter best, to smile at her, but she could see how broken it was. "I know a place we can talk in private." He paused then, smile fading entirely as he looked away from her, one arm raising up to clutch his other. "...you'll be safe, I promise." He mumbled, and it broke her heart to hear it.

What was it like, being afraid of yourself?

"I know that." Sam said gently, smiling at him as she placed a hand on his shoulder. "I trust you, Danny." She said. "Come on, let's go before we run into any teachers."

Nodding his head, but still unable to meet her eyes, Danny carefully took Sam's hand, holding it so gently that it was like they were barely touching at all. He could hear him in his head, his other self, chuckling in merriment, finding all of this delightful. It didn't seem to bother him that Sam's reaction to him now wasn't to flee and run in terror- in fact, he seemed to like this better.

_Fight as much as you like, but I don't intend to lose._

It was all Danny could do to bite his tongue and not tell him to shut up. He lead Sam into an out of the way corner of the hall, glancing around to make sure nobody was looking. Carefully holding her wrists, she noticed how she flinched a little when he did, and then quickly tried to cover it up with a smile. He pretended he hadn't noticed, but he knew that she had seen it.

Turning them both intangible, he saw Sam's eyes shooting up as the cold tingle ran through her body, and for a brief moment, he smiled. Stepping back with her, he lead her into a room that she didn't even know was there. It was utterly empty, devoid of any light, or it was, until a ball of green ectoplasm flickered to life in Danny's hand, several of which he began to place around the room.

"I found this place in my many times of being thrown through the walls." He joked, and Sam was at least glad to see he could still manage the effort. "It was probably supposed to be used for something at first, before someone changed their mind and put a wall over it. Probably a storage closet of some sort. Nobody will hear us here."

"Danny." Sam said slowly, suddenly not knowing how to begin- he cut her off, however, shaking his head.

"Please let me see them." He told her, and his blue eyes met hers. They glowed a little, in the dark, but it was an odd, comforting glow. She wasn't afraid of them, not like she had been with the eyes of his other self.

She didn't lie, claim there was nothing to be shown. There was no room for lies here. Instead, she took off her gloves and rolled off her sleeves, extending her arms to her friend. She wondered if he could see even in the mostly dark room, and she supposed that he could. Perhaps another perk of being half ghost.

He sucked in a breath, lightly holding her wrists as he looked at the hand shaped bruises on them. He didn't need Black's colorful commentary to know what had happened. He shook his head, as if he were still trying to desperately believe that it hadn't finally come to this, like he one day feared that it would.

Someone had hurt Sam, had violated her, and that someone had been _him_.

"I'm so sorry." Danny choked out, dropping her hands. "Sam, I'm so sorry. I never wanted to hurt you. I didn't want it to come to this."

"It's okay, Danny." She said, her voice gentle and soft. "It's okay. We'll figure something out. We're going to fight this, okay? We're not going to give up so easily."

"It's not okay." Danny said, shaking his head. "I _hurt _you, Sam. I can't forgive myself for that."

"But it wasn't _you_." She insisted, taking hold of his shoulders. He was cold, so cold. Was there nothing she could do to warm him up?

"No." Danny said shortly, giving her a long look, pain very visible in his eyes. "It was me. I can't deny that. I can't deny that this voice, this person inside my head is me. I tried. I've been trying."

He slumped down then, pulling his knees up to his chest and hanging his head, placing his arms over his knees. "I should have told you and Tucker about all of this so much sooner. Maybe then I could have stopped this. But at the rate things are going Sam, I'm afraid. I'm so very afraid that I'm going to lose."

"You're not!" Sam insisted, crouching down by him, taking his hands, trying to get him to look her in the eyes. "You can fight this Danny, I know that you can. And you have me here as well, I'll fight with you. So don't give up, Danny."

"I won't." He said after a moment, looking up at her. "I know, Sam, I know that I just can't give up like that. It's just..." He heaved a sigh, shaking his head. "I'm starting to get to my wit's end here. I didn't want you to know about this, not this part." He admitted. "I thought maybe if I didn't tell you anything, I could keep you safer. I guess that was wrong."

"Did he hurt you?" He asked.

Sam took in and let out a deep breath, before she slowly nodded her head. "...Yes." She admitted. "I won't lie to you, Danny. That won't do any good. Yes, he hurt me. The physical aspect of it wasn't the worst by far."

"I am sorry, Sam." Danny said again, moving his knees so that he sat cross legged on the floor. Sam joined him, taking his hands in her own, twining them together. If not for the subject matter they were discussing, this would kind of be nice, she thought.

"I know you are Danny." She said, smiling at him. "From now on, let me be your strength. I might not have any special powers, but I'm not exactly weak."

"If it gets dangerous though- if _I _get dangerous," Danny said, this time meeting her eyes, his faintly glowing blue ones conveying a deep seriousness to his words. "Run away. Get away as far as you can. Because if I lose, I don't intend to still let him _win_."

_She's not going to be able to beat me either, you know that, right?_

"Danny." Sam said slowly, the meaning of his words sinking into her. "You can't mean that."

"I have to be prepared if it does happen." Danny told her. "But I will fight with everything I have to make sure that is the last resort. I promise to you Sam, as long as there is a single ounce of me left in this body, I won't give up fighting."

That eased her worries some, but didn't appear to erase them. "Alright, Danny." She said after a moment, nodding her head. "You know I trust you, and you can tell me anything. We can't have any more secrets between us." She told him. "Now's not the time for that. And you know that we need to bring Tucker into this as well. He can help too. We both can. And we can start by lightening your various burdens."

"We might not be the most competent of ghost hunting partners, but we'll be there for you still. And don't worry about your homework. Tucker and I will take care of that. What you need is as little stress as possible." She told him.

_It won't work, you know._

This time, even in the dim light, Sam caught Danny's flinch. Frowning a little, she peered at the half ghost. "Is he talking to you right now, Danny?"

"Yes." Danny groaned, rubbing his forehead. "Sometimes he never shuts up. I have to deal with him all day and night." He told her. "It's why I never really get any sleep anymore. If I fall asleep too deeply then... he comes out. And I don't want him to come out." He dropped his hand, shaking his head. "It didn't use to be this bad. It didn't start out this way."

"When did it start?" She asked, making sure that she was still firmly holding his hands, letting him know that she was there to support him. "I want to know."

Danny nodded, grateful for the continuing contact. "It started around half a year ago." He told her. "At first it was nothing big, just a vague whisper, a murmur when I was about to drift off to sleep. I couldn't even make out what it was saying. But gradually, it got more pronounced, and these strange, dark urges began to rise up inside of me- telling me to be more violent, more aggressive. I ignored them, blocked them, pretended they weren't there- but it didn't help at all."

"Then the voice came." Danny said, and at this point, he broke eye contact, unable to hold it anymore. "Just small murmurs at first. Whispers. But eventually it got stronger and more insistent. It told me things, said things to me, remarked on everything around me- and I didn't like it. It was my voice saying these things."

"And a few weeks ago, the blackouts began." He admitted finally. "The first time I realized they were happening, I found myself standing in the middle of the street in the dead of night, with no idea how I even got there." He told her. "Sometimes they happen when I'm Phantom too, but only for a few brief minutes- I'll be fighting, and then I black out, and when I come too..."

"That explains the supposed increase of aggression everyone's been saying Phantom's been having lately." Sam said, frowning deeply. Opponents of Phantom had been pointing to it as the ghost giving away his true colors- luckily, no humans had been hurt yet. Sam couldn't say the same for some of the ghosts Phantom fought, however.

"Yeah." Danny nodded his head, finally looking up at her. His eyes were tired, so tired. "But it mostly happens at night, when I fall asleep." He told her. "Which is why I've been trying not to lately."

"That's only going to make things worse Danny." Sam said, frowning.

"I know. But what else am I supposed to do, Sam?" He asked her, eyes almost pleading now. "I don't know what I'm supposed to do. I'm at a serious loss here."

"We'll think of something!" She assured him, lightly squeezing his hands. "I promise, Danny. I'm not going to let you be overtaken by some other personality."

Danny gave her a small nod. "I know. Thank you, Sam." There was a long pause there, as if there were a lingering question that he wanted to ask, but at the same time, dared not to. "...Are you sure you're not afraid of me?"

"Of you?" Sam asked, then snorted, shaking her head. "Danny Fenton, half ghost or not, you're my friend. My _best _friend. I'm not afraid of you."

_But she is afraid of __**me**__._

"Don't listen to him, Danny." Sam implored him, catching that look in his eyes again, the one that always appeared when the other self spoke. "Try to ignore him if you can. He just wants to goad you on."

"I know." Danny said again, wondering how many times he had said that phrase this morning already. "But sometimes it's hard, Sam." He told her, giving her a pained smile. "Sometimes it's so very, very hard."

* * *

It wasn't until after school that they had a chance to get Tucker to talk with them in some place private. They had returned to the gazebo where they had learned Danny's first secret, and together with Sam, they had explained everything to him. What hurt Sam the most was the fact that during this, Danny couldn't even make himself look at Tucker, as if he was too afraid what he would see on his face.

He was so utterly, utterly prepared for rejection.

He didn't get it, of course, Tucker wasn't like that. Sure, he was horrified- but he was horrified for Danny's sake. Once everything was over, he grabbed his friend, and pulled him into a completely shameless hug, promising him that he would be there for him no matter what, even if he was afraid he was slowly descending into insanity.

Which was Sam's best guess as to what was actually happening. She'd brought up calling Jazz to Danny, to bring in someone as close to a professional as they could get- but he quickly shot it down. She didn't need to know, he said, and he was worried that news of this reaching her would only cause her to come home from school. As long as she was away at college, she was safe, safe from any harm that could befall her.

It pained Sam to know that the one Danny was worried about harming her was himself.

"Okay, but if it gets worse, we need to talk to Jazz." Tucker insisted. "She's the one who knows about all of this psychology mumbo jumbo anyways. And Danny, I'm pretty sure what you have going on is some kind of psychological issue. You might have ghost powers, but I don't think they're what's driving all of this." Tucker told him. "They make everything worse, yes, but If you were worried about your ghost half slowly turning you evil or something... well then I don't think that's it."

"That's only a little bit of a relief." Danny mumbled. "Are you guys sure you're not cold? We can go inside somewhere if you need to warm up." He said, glancing between the two of them. As a blessed mercy, the day had been free of any ghost attacks, as if the very world itself was trying to keep the half ghost as stress free as possible.

Or perhaps the ghosts had begun to catch word of Phantom's gradual changes, and had decided it would be best to stay away from Amity Park for the time being. Sam wasn't really sure if that was a good thing.

"Yeah, I am a bit nippy." Sam admitted. She'd worn a better coat today, but it was still freezing outside- and Danny being close to them didn't do them any favors. It seemed that even in human form, the temperature dropped while he was around. His body was radiating cold, and she wondered how she had managed to miss that up until this point. She'd probably just dismissed it all as being due to faulty air conditioning systems and heaters.

How much, she couldn't help but wonder, of Danny was really still human? It wasn't a thought that she would voice out loud, but the more she looked for them, the more ghostly traits that she could see, and the less human-like ones. She wondered if Danny himself had noticed this, and wondered what he thought about this. She wondered if knowing about it was what was contributing to his mental deterioration.

She wondered too, if Danny's parents were really as in the dark as he thought they were. Surely they must have some sort of suspicion that something was going on with their son. After all, if Sam and Tucker had noticed it, then she didn't understand how Danny's own parents could have missed it.

She didn't know what she should do in that regard- what if they found out during this whole mess, and got the wrong idea? What if they made everything worse? Surely telling them the truth now, the whole truth, would be their best option. They could avoid any misunderstandings that way, and it would be another load off of Danny's back. Surely his parents would accept him, half ghost or not, right? Even with the problems he was going through at the moment, surely they would still accept him, wouldn't they?

Ultimately, it was the fact that she had to ask these questions that she decided to hold her tongue for now. She'd think on it some more, and then consult with Danny before deciding anything. She didn't want to do anything behind his back, especially not if it held the risk of making everything worse.

"That's what I thought. You looked a little cold." Danny said, smiling a little sheepishly- an expression that she was glad to see on his face. "I know I don't help much. I don't think I used to admit cold air." He told them. "It's recent. Frostbite says it's because my ice powers have settled more in me."

"Why don't you ask some of your ghost allies about what's going on, Danny?" Tucker asked. "I mean, I know I said it wasn't a ghost issue, but this Frostbite guy sounds pretty wise, maybe he would have some kind of answer?"

"I don't know." Danny frowned. "It's probably best for me not to go seeking anyone out in the Ghost Zone for awhile." He told them, and if Sam didn't know any better, it looked like he was keeping something from them. He must have caught her look, because he held up his hands, giving in.

"There's a ghost in the Ghost Zone that really, really doesn't like me." Danny told them. "If Walker found out I was starting to lose it, or whatever it is that is happening to me, I've got very little doubt that it would be enough excuse for him to lock me up forever. And then I probably really _would _lose it."

"Is that the dude who framed you for attacking the mayor?" Tucker asked, standing up and starting to move on. Clearly he was freezing his butt off, and didn't intend to let this turn of conversation keep them lingering outside for any longer than it had to.

"That's the one." Danny nodded his head, walking behind him. Sam hung back a little, her gait a bit slower since she had the twisted ankle to deal with. Both Danny and Tucker noticed this, and slowed their pace accordingly, allowing her to keep up without too much trouble.

"Sounds like a real pain in the ass to me." Tucker snorted. "What did you even do to make him hate you so much?"

"Oh, uh." Danny frowned, rubbing the back of his neck, averting his gaze. "I may have instigated a prison riot."

"That would do it." Sam chimed in. "Well, surely to God we're capable of figuring this out." She said. "Don't worry Danny. Tucker and I are going to do everything we can to help you out. Maybe it's just a matter of eliminating as much stress as we can from your life." She said, trying to sound optimistic.

She didn't think it was that simple, and she got the feeling that they both knew it, too.

Still, Danny smiled back at her. "Yeah, you're right Sam. We've got to stay positive, right?"

_Stay as positive as you like! _Black chimed in, sounding rather amused by this notion. _It'll just make it all the better when you finally break._

"That must get really annoying." Tucker noted, having already caught on to what the slight twitch of Danny's eyes meant. "Does he always talk to you like that?"

"Most always." Danny grumbled, kicking a pine cone in front of them along. "He goes to sleep sometimes and that's a blessed quiet. But most of the time he never shuts up. It's everything I can do not to yell at him in public. I don't want complete strangers knowing I'm going crazy."

"I wouldn't say you're going crazy, exactly..." Tucker began, but quickly shut his mouth when Danny gave him a blank stare. "Well, perhaps a little bit. But you know, it's just stress right? All of this is stress induced. What Sam was saying sounds pretty reasonable- cut back on your sources of stress and a solution very well might present itself."

"I hope so." Danny said, glancing between the two. "Look, I have to get home. I want to see if there's any way to ghost proof my room." He told them. "If I can keep myself inside at night, then maybe I'll reduce the chance of hurting anyone."

_Oh please._

"That sounds like it might be an idea. Be careful that your folks don't notice though, okay?" Sam pointed out. "They'll probably raise a few brows if they see you doing that."

"Don't worry, I've learned how to hide things from my folks." Danny assured her. "Wow that sounded worse than I intended it to be." He frowned, shaking his head. Two rings of light flashed around his waist then, leaving Phantom in his place. "Alright guys, catch you later. I'll give you a call if anything comes up."

"Same, dude." Tucker waved a hand, watching Phantom fly off. "Ugh, that's so cool. I wish I-"

"Whoa there big boy, no wishing in Amity Park." Sam quickly cut him off. "Finish that and you might find yourself floating off into the stratosphere."

"Oh, nice save, thanks Sam." Tucker chuckled. His expression darkened then, and he glanced back at her. "Sam?"

"Yeah?" She asked, meeting his eyes.

"Do you really think we've got a chance at saving him?" He asked.

"I think we're better off fighting it than sitting down and letting it happen." She said. "But to be honest... I don't really know. I want to say yes, every part of me wants to say yes but..."

"No, I know what you mean." Tucker said, his frown deepening. "I want to say yes too."

* * *

Maddie Fenton was worried.

She'd woken up in the middle of the night last night in order to get a glass of water, only to once again, spot her son leaving the house in the middle of the night. She'd tried to call out to him, only for him to ignore her. The strangest part of it all was the strange feeling of unease she got as she watched him leave, and how that feeling had lifted once her son was gone, as if this had somehow put her out of danger.

Which was absurd. Her son Danny was not dangerous. Clumsy, uncoordinated, maybe, but not dangerous, never dangerous. He was a sweet young boy, who loved his family, and cared about his friends and...

and was keeping secrets.

They both noticed them of course, both her and Jack. The scars that he tried to hide, that injuries that he pretended he didn't have. He healed far too fast, which was both to Maddie's great relief and to her dislike. No human could go to bed with what was clearly a broken leg one night, and then wake up with only a small limp the next morning. She knew that, and she had stopped trying to convince herself of anything otherwise. She needed, after all, to look at the problem her son was going through very seriously.

Maddie Fenton was no fool. From the first time she noticed that all of their ghost hunting equipment keyed into her son consistently, she had known that something was wrong. The first time he had come home limping, something that couldn't have possibly been caused by bullying, she knew something was wrong.

It had all started after the accident with the Fenton Portal four years ago. She knew that it had some side effects on her son- his body temperature had been drastically lowered, though this appeared to have no effect on his overall health, to her great relief. And if she didn't miss her guess, it was as if he had gained some kind of sixth sense from the accident as well, although it was one that he was loathe to admit to.

Sometimes, Maddie had noticed, his eyes even changed color, to a brilliant green- and even when normal, in the dark, they seemed to glow. No doubt his night vision was nothing short of perfect, something which Maddie envied slightly. But all of these could be explained away as the aftereffects of receiving a heavy dose of ectoplasmic radiation, and they could all be managed. She didn't love her son any less if he was cold, or had a sixth sense, or if his eyes had become a bit strange. She could handle these changes, and she knew Jack could to.

They never mentioned noticing them to Danny because he seemed so bent on keeping them a secret- that said, Maddie didn't even know if her son even knew his eyes glowed in the dark. He probably had no idea.

But there was another, much bigger secret that he was keeping from them- and recently, Maddie suspected that the number of secrets had increased to two.

She had been very happy, however, when Danny came home the other night and seemed for all the world as if a huge burden had been lifted off his shoulders. It was like the troubles he had been facing were able to be forgotten for the moment- and she'd been even happier when she saw two familiar faces come to visit the next day. Sam and Tucker, who Danny hadn't invited over for ages, to the point where she was honestly starting to wonder if the trio weren't friends anymore. Danny told her so very little about his personal life these days that she couldn't help but worry.

She thought maybe things were starting to change for the better.

And then he came home today, looking as if the world had crashed down on him, as if someone had learned something about him that he never wanted them to know. Oh, he wore a smile on his face, and he wore the smiling mask well, but she was his mother, and she knew when something was wrong. But every time she had tried to talk to him about it, he had shut her down, changed the topic. He didn't want to discuss it, not with her.

If it weren't for the fact that her son was talking to himself, rather angrily at that, she might have decided to let him handle it. He was eighteen after all, nearly an adult. He couldn't depend on his parents forever, and she knew that much. At some point, he would need to strike out on his own, and as much as she never wanted to let her precious baby boy go, she knew that she couldn't keep him bound here forever. He would hate that, wouldn't want it one bit.

But something was very wrong with her son, and she would have to be a fool of a mother to not notice that much.

Something that was much, much more wrong than whatever connection her son held to ghosts.

It was more than just a sixth sense, she knew that much. It was some kind of deep connection, something that made him a bit closer to them than other humans. At first Maddie had been afraid, wondering if perhaps she would wake up one morning to find her baby boy had been spirited away- but that had relaxed after awhile. He had a connection to ghosts, Maddie was no fool, she knew that much, she just didn't know what it was.

But it was most likely tied to Phantom, who unmistakably resembled her son.

Again, Maddie Fenton was no fool.

It wasn't just his appearance, oh no, it was his personality as well. Phantom was very similar, so very similar to her son that it was honestly rather disquieting. Possession, then? Perhaps Phantom had just Danny as his host to manifest in the real world. Perhaps he'd imprinted off of her son. Whatever the case, the two of them were always far too much alike for Maddie's liking.

She'd never said any of this to her son, fearing that he would only close up if she voice her suspicions and any avenue she had to gain information would close up, just like that. So she had decided to hold her tongue and to wait, wait and see if Danny- or perhaps even Phantom- would approach her and let her in on what was going on between the two boys.

But now she got the feeling that waiting wasn't really an option anymore. And she hated that.

Because it meant something had gone terribly, terribly wrong.

She wasn't sure which one she would have better luck with. Danny was her own son, of course, but he was being so secretive and hiding behind locked doors that she doubted asking him would be of much use. Phantom, then, the ghost had shown himself to be reasonable from time to time, not doubt if she approached him with weapons lowered, he might be willing to explain himself. On the other hand, she'd noticed that the ghost had been growing more aggressive as of late, as if in response to whatever sudden, second secret it was that her Danny was hiding.

Right now, Danny was up in his room- or he should be at any rate. Her son had developed remarkable efficiency in sneaking out of the house without notice. If she didn't know any better, it was almost as if he could walk through walls or something.

"Danny?" Maddie asked, knocking on his door. She balanced a plate of cookies in her hands, hoping that her son was actually in there. She heard him stir, heard the sound of something being slid underneath his bed- the missing ghost hunting gear from their lab, she knew- and the door being unlocked. And there was her son, smiling at her, but looking a bit confused about the intrusion- all which quickly faded when he laid his eyes on the plate of cookies, and she could hear his stomach rumbled.

"I saved them from your father." She said, grinning at him. "Can I come in?" She asked.

"Oh, sure!" Danny said, stepping back to let her in, casting a quick glance over his room, no doubt to ensure that there was nothing suspicious where she could see it. Satisfied that there wasn't, he smiled at his mother as she took a seat on his bed. A bed that she knew he barely slept in anymore.

The bags underneath his eyes worried her too.

"Honey?" Maddie asked, as Danny took a cookie from the plate and bit into it. "Can we talk?"

There it was, the flinch that she had begun to associate with the beginning of his lies. It hurt her, really, to know that her own son felt the need to lie to her. They used to be so close, and she could have never dreamed that one day he would be keeping secrets from her. He used to be such a little mama's boy.

"About what?" Danny asked, trying to act as nonchalant as possible.

"About you." Maddie said, in no uncertain terms. "I've been waiting for you to just come out with it and tell me what it is that you've been hiding for the longest time now, but now I'm worried about you Danny. Deeply worried. Where did you go last night?" She asked him.

Her son paled at the question, swallowing the bit of cookie he was chewing. "Just... for a walk." He stammered. He had no way of telling his mother that he didn't know where he went. As a small blessing, it seemed that Black was asleep at the moment. The last thing he needed right now was his unwanted comments on everything.

"In the middle of the night?" Maddie asked, arching her brows. "I'm concerned about you Danny. You never sleep these days, and you seem to be a nervous wreak- I've heard you talking to yourself, you know." She said, then sighed, taking his hand in her own. He was so cold! She could never get used to it, not really, never get used to her son being so very cold. He made entire rooms colder when he was in them, and she knew that wasn't normal.

"Please Danny." Maddie begged him. "Something is going very wrong with you, honey, and I want to help you. I'm your mother. You can trust me." She pleaded with him. "Whatever secrets you're keeping, I swear that I don't care what they are. I just want to know, I just want to help."

Danny opened his mouth, ready to refuse the idea of telling her anything- but then shut it just as quickly. It was keeping secrets that had gotten him into this mess, wasn't it? If he kept lying now he would just be digging a bigger hole for himself. "You promise?" He asked finally, barely able to croak it out.

"I promise." She repeated. "Danny, I already know a little of it already. You don't think your father and I haven't noticed about your sixth sense?" She asked him- and from the startled look on his face, she guessed he hadn't. "Honey, did you know your eyes glow in the dark?" She asked him.

"T-they do?" Danny stammered, reaching a hand up and placing it over his eyes, before dumbly realizing he could never see it for himself. Nothing ever really looked 'dark' to him, everything looked the same, be it night or day. "I didn't know that." He admitted, rubbing the back of his neck. "Um, there's a good reason for that, for everything."

"I know. I'm sure there is. Your father and I know it's just a side effect from the portal accident. Getting that much ectoplasmic radiation pumped into you is going to leave you with some side effects after all. Like your body temperature." She noted. "Your father and I know about these things, but we love you anyways, Danny. You're our son. Nothing you could possibly tell us could change that."

He took in and let out a deep breath then, closing his eyes and nodding his head. "Okay." He said finally. "I'll tell you. I'll show you." He told her, opening his eyes- and she already expected the color to be that bright, glowing green. They were a bit pretty, really, once she got over their ghostly nature. She'd always thought so- and that was why she was never afraid of them when they came out.

"Okay Danny." Maddie said slowly. "I'm ready for anything. And I'll listen to you until you're ready for me to say anything. Do you want me to call your father?" She asked him.

"No, not quite yet." He shook his head. "I'd rather do this one at a time, if you don't mind." He admitted. "It would be a bit easier for me that way." He told her.

"I understand." She nodded again, letting go of his hands, setting aside the plate of cookies. "Whenever you're ready."

He took in another deep breath, steadying himself, before he stood up. Summoning up all of his courage, he closed his eyes, summoning the two rings of light that would change him into his Phantom form. She could hear a small gasp escape from his mother's lips, and then felt the rush of cold sweep over him. When his eyes opened, he met her shocked face, trying his best to give her a small smile.

"You see mom. I'm... Phantom."


	5. Gray

Author's Note: At long last, chapter five! I'm sorry for the wait, but hopefully this chapter makes up for it. I actually teared up in a few places when writing the Danny and Maddie scene, oops, I am too easily affected by my own writing, I guess. Thanks to those of you who reviewed last chapter! I hope you all enjoy this one just as much!

Danny Phantom does not belong to me, obviously.

* * *

White and Black

Chapter Five: Gray

* * *

"You see, mom. I'm... Phantom."

The next few moments perhaps held the most awkward silence that Phantom had ever experienced in his young life. Even more so than when he had confessed to being Phantom to Sam and Tucker- and what's more, he could see gears visibly churning inside his mother's head, although for all the world she seemed completely blown away by this revelation. He just hoped that what thoughts were swirling through her head wouldn't make him regret confessing this to her, and he hoped that it wouldn't make his current problem even worse.

At least Black was still asleep. Somehow, the knowledge that the split personality would drift off from time to time wasn't all that comforting to him- it just meant that it had enough confidence that it could sleep without any worry. And that was not a luxury that Phantom could afford.

"You're..." Maddie finally spoke up a little, but quickly shut her mouth, getting to her feet. She moved, almost as if by instinct, to reach out, and take Phantom's hand, turning it over in her own, almost in wonder. He let her, realizing that this was probably a lot for her to take in all at once.

She reached her hands up to his face next, cupping it between them, and staring into the green eyes, her own violet ones searching it. For some sign of her son, Phantom thought glumly. They slid back down to his neck, and he could feel two fingers press down on a pressure point, before she withdrew them, staring at her own hands as if she thought they had betrayed her in some way. "You don't have a pulse."

"I'm a ghost?" Phantom offered dumbly, tilting his head to the side. "Right now, at any rate." He told her. "Look, I know this is a lot to take in, but I swear to God, it's not like... it's not like it's possession or overshadowing or anything like that. It's just me. And... I don't really know how to explain it to you, I know that you've said in the past that things like half ghosts shouldn't exist, that _I _shouldn't exist, because that's what I am, I think but-_ I'm here_. And that's all I can really say."

"I don't understand." Maddie said finally after a long moment, sitting back on the bed, placing a hand on her head. "All the evidence says but... then you're here." She said, looking back up towards him, uncertainty in her eyes that pained Phantom to see. "You are my Danny, aren't you? Mine?"

"Yes." Phantom nodded his head slowly, thinking it might be best to turn back to normal for now. The white rings spread apart once again, leaving him transformed back into normal, human Danny Fenton. Or as normal as he could ever be, at any rate. Actually normalcy had escaped him a long time ago. "I can promise you that."

_For now, at least._

For a moment, he thought that Black had woken up, but no, depressingly enough, he realized that those were his _own _thoughts. He wanted to hope, and he was going to fight but- well, he had made a contingency plan for a _reason_.

Maddie let out a deep breath, slowly trying to steady her thoughts. She had... expected something, some kind of connection to Phantom. Phantom had imprinted off of Danny, perhaps, and as a result, had left an assortment of spectral traces on her son. That was what she was expecting, that's what she thought she would find out. Not- not this. This challenged everything she knew, everything she thought she had learned about ghosts. For a being to be living and dead at the same time, half-dead, half-ghost, in some sort of state of limbo, was inconceivable. It shouldn't have been possible.

Even now, the logical, scientific part of her mind was trying to argue with her, trying to convince her that she was right. Phantom was lying to her, he wasn't her son! Because if he was really her son, if Phantom was really _Danny_, then that would have to mean that for the past four years, the ghost that they had been hunting, the ghost that they had threatened to tear apart molecule by molecule time and time again, sometimes in front of Danny, _was _Danny.

But she knew, the maternal part of her knew, that Phantom- that Danny- wasn't lying to her. They were one and the same. This was her son before her, telling her the earnest truth, finally, what she had always wanted to hear from him, and he was desperately, desperately hoping that she would accept him, that she wouldn't push him away, that she wouldn't freak out or try and use him as a lab rat. These were fears, real fears that her son had, fears that no child should _ever _have in regards to their parents.

She had been hunting her son.

Her son was _half-dead._

It was these, two terrifying thoughts, more than anything else, that caused her to keep her mouth shut, unable to think of anything to say. They kept swimming in her head, cycling around and about. They had been hunting their own son! They had shot at him, injured him on occasion! They had helped brand their own child as Public Ghost Enemy Number One, and they had threatened to 'study Phantom's remains'.

Her son was half-dead. Half-dead! Just a second ago, he didn't have a pulse, and very visibly _wasn't breathing_! But she knew her son was alive still, she had felt his pulse, though weak, before, and she knew his heart was beating properly and all of his bodily functions were in good order. But he was also so cold, even as a human, so very cold. More like a corpse than a living person, she thought. How had they never noticed? How had they never noticed that their stupid portal had _half-killed_ their son?

Her precious, precious baby boy.

"...Mom?" Danny meekly spoke up, fear starting to manifest in those baby blue eyes of his, an expression that made Maddie's heart catch in her throat. Her son should never have to look at her with those eyes, she loved him!

She loved him. She loved him even if he was half-dead, even if he was half-ghost, even if he was Phantom. Nothing could ever change that!

Finally, Maddie trusted herself enough to speak, taking in and letting out a deep breath. "It's okay, Danny." She said finally, her voice faint to her own ears. She stood up then, placing her hands on his shoulders, before pulling him into a tight embrace. It used to be that she would be smothering him with her chest, but at some point, he had shot up, and now he was a good several inches taller than her. But still, he was her son, her precious baby boy, no matter how tall he grew, no matter how much he changed.

She would always love him.

"It's okay." She said again, holding him close to her. After a moment's hesitation, her son slowly returned the embrace, holding his mother close to him. "I love you, Danny. You know that. You know nothing would ever change that. I just wish you had told me about all of this sooner so we could have avoided, well... avoided many things."

Avoided hunting you.

"I'm sorry, I know." Danny whispered, almost not trusting his voice. "I should have, I really should have. Mom, it's..." He pulled back from the hug, his hands resting on her shoulders as he averted his gaze from her, unable to face her any longer. He was so overwhelmed by this, to be honest, and it made what he had to confess to her next all the worse- because it would change things. He knew that much. But he needed to tell her, she needed to know, in the event that at some point, he couldn't handle Black anymore and he...

He tried to do something to his mother. He didn't want that, he didn't want that _at all._

"There's something else, isn't there?" Maddie said after a moment, carefully moving her son's chin so that she faced him. Deep regret and shame were in those blue eyes of his, as if he didn't want to talk about the subject he would broach next. "It's alright, Danny, you can tell me." She assured him. "The reason that I decided to have this little chat with you in the first place, Danny, was because I noticed that something seemed to be deeply troubling you lately, and I wanted to be there for you. I promise you, whatever you tell me, it won't change anything."

"No, it will." Danny whispered after a moment, but he didn't break eye contact this time. "I... Mom," He began, thoughts racing in his head, uncertain as to how to even approach this topic. What should he say, what should he tell her? 'Mom, I might be going crazy and/or turning evil?'. He couldn't say that!

"Last night, the person who left..." Danny began, involuntarily tightening his grips on his mother's shoulders. She kept her expression as it was, biting back a wince- her son had gotten quite the grip! "...that was me, but it also... it also _wasn't_ me."

"I felt it was something like that." Maddie breathed after a moment, reaching over to her shoulder and prying off one of her son's hands, cupping it in her own. "That person last night didn't seem like you, didn't give off the right kind of air." She said, frowning deeply. "Danny, does this have anything to do with why you don't seem to be sleeping lately? And... why sometimes Phantom is so... erratic?"

"It has everything to do with that." Danny said finally, thankful for his mother's hand around his own. "I don't know _what _to say, mom. It started as just... sometimes a dark urge or two, but lately there's been this voice in my head, and it keeps talking to me and taunting me, and even more lately sometimes I just... I just black out. And I think- no, not think, I know, _I know_, that's because the voice takes me over. It... I'm scared, mom. I don't know what to do, I don't know how to fight this, though I'm trying. I just... I don't want to lose myself, and I'm so afraid that's going to happen to me, and then I'll do terrible things to everyone I know and-"

"Danny." Maddie cut him off, grasping his hand tighter, trying to not let her own fear show on her face. Her son being Phantom was a truth that she could ultimately handle, but he was right- this was something else. And it filled her with fear, fear for her son, that he had been struggling with this alone for _any _period of time. "I'm not going to let something like that happen. I won't."

"It's getting worse. I keep fighting and fighting and it's getting worse." Danny whispered, a look of distress crossing his face. "I can't even sleep properly anymore, because I know when I do, he'll take my place and I don't know what he'll do when that time comes. Last night... last night he hurt Sam. She came to school with these awful bruises on her wrists and she... he kissed her, even though she didn't want that, and I don't know what to do. I'm just very afraid."

"I know you are, sweetie. I would be too." She said. "But you need to calm down. Take a deep breath, Danny." She told him, and her son slowly nodded, taking in a deep breath, and letting it out slowly. "Good." Maddie smiled. "Danny, I swear to you, I won't let anything like that happen. If there is something going on inside of you that shouldn't be, then I'll find a way to stop it. I'm not going to let anything happen to my son, and I'm sure as hell not going to let something take over his body without giving it one hell of a fight. And Fentons are fighters, you remember that, right honey?"

Danny nodded meekly, and Maddie's smile grew. "And that includes you. You might be the strongest fighter in the entire Fenton family. You can fight this, and you can win. I trust you, I _know _my son, I know my child. You'll be _fine_."

They were reassuring words, and Maddie had every intention to do everything in her power to see that they held true, but she still couldn't help but feel terrified, deep down, of what was happening to her son. If what Danny was trying to get at was true, and something within his mind was changing- some second personality, from the sound of it, was trying to escape, then it could spell disaster. She knew what a strong ghost Phantom was, so if that power was coupled with a personality that didn't hesitate to use it for personal gain or to cause suffering to others... she didn't want to think about what would happen. There was little to no doubt that such a Phantom would be able to wreak havoc, and she wasn't even sure if she could stop him at that point.

But it didn't have to get to that point, Maddie silently reminded herself. She wouldn't let it. Danny wouldn't let it- they would fight, and they would _refuse _to surrender. And yet... she was a ghost hunter, and that part of her was warning her to brace for the worst, to prepare for the possibility that her son would lose, that her sweet, loving, kind, caring son could turn into a monster before she could even do anything to stop it.

What was _worse _was that she knew that Danny knew this too- he seemed to know just what was at stake if he lost. And she knew that these thoughts couldn't be helping his fractured psyche at all.

But the worst part? The worst part of all was that she and Jack had helped drive their son into this corner. Because they had been hunting Phantom so passionately, because they said such things about him, because they said such things about ghosts in general. Danny must have taken them to heart, without ever letting this show on his face. He'd just had to sit there, and silently take their words, and couldn't even protest to them, because it would have risked giving himself away.

What was that even _like_?

"I'll fight." Danny said weakly finally. "As best as I can. But mom, I know what I'm going to ask of you next is hard, but I need you to promise me something."

"Danny no, please don't." Maddie shook her head, feeling a hint of tears forming at the corner of her eyes. "Don't say it."

"I have to. I have to, otherwise it will eat away at you for a long time." Danny told her, his voice barely above a whisper. "If I lose... _don't hesitate_."

Tears trickled down her face slowly as she nodded her head, pulling her son back into another embrace. "I promise."

* * *

The sun had long since set over Amity Park, and normally, this would bring ghosts with it. However, this night seemed frightfully dull on ghost activity, which, while that was a good thing for your average citizen of Amity Park, was not exactly what the Red Hunter hoped to find. To be honest, ghost activity had been down this path month, ever since Phantom started acting weird.

She'd noticed it, of _course_ she had. She fought Phantom on a regular basis after all- she had a deep seated grudge against the white haired ghost, one that she wasn't going to forgive so easily. After all, Phantom had not only caused her father to lose his job, but he had also caused him to be saddled with thousands of dollars in debt, was to blame for the loss of their house, and was to blame for her sudden drop from the A List crowd at Amity Park, although the latter one she had come to mind a lot less in recent years.

The Red Hunter- or Valerie Gray, rather, was on her nightly patrol, having finished up her homework rather easily that night. A pretty simple workload for a change, which she was glad for. It meant that she could spend even more time kicking ghost butt- or at least, she could, if there were any around. It was strange, to be honest, there was usually at least one ghost attack a day, but so far, it seemed like there hadn't even been one.

It wasn't just her imagination, they really _had _been dwindling lately, hadn't they?

Valerie had mixed feelings about this. On one hand, she loved being a ghost hunter, and watching ghosts squirm as they tried to escape from her was one of her great pleasures in life. On the other hand, it meant that she had more time for schoolwork, and more time to take on extra shifts at the Nasty Burger. She did have college to save up for, after all, her father's debts weren't just going to magically pay themselves.

On the other hand, she had a feeling that the reason the usual ghosts were avoiding Amity Park as of late had a lot to do with Phantom's abnormal behavior. He had shown, on occasion, more aggressive behavior than normal, as if he were gleefully enjoying the fight, using none of his trademark 'witty banter' that grated on Valerie's nerves so. The change was... highly unnerving, to be honest, Valerie had to admit. She had seen it first hand once, when he had been fighting her. One minute, he was the same as he always was, countering her by blasting her weapons out of her hands and avoiding her blasts and then the next-

He was on the counterattack.

She cringed, just remembering it reminded her that her left shoulder was still throbbing from where he had forced her against a wall, before she had fired one of her ectoguns, causing him to sail away from her. He hadn't attacked her after that, seemingly shifting back into the normal Phantom, almost seeming... _horrified_, at what he had done, at what he had almost done. And then he had just vanished, just like that, no witty parting banter, no nothing.

Just gone.

It left Valerie more than a little puzzled. It seemed to her like something was clearly happening with Phantom, and she didn't like it one bit. What was more was that it made her realize that he had been holding back on her _this entire time_, and that when he unleashed his full strength, she _almost _couldn't retaliate in time. It was a very near thing, she wasn't fooling herself about this, and as a result, she had been stepping up her training lately, using some of her newfound free time in order to do so.

Next time, she would be ready, although to be honest, she really hoped that there wouldn't be a next time. As grating as Phantom's normal battle dialogue was, she would take that any day over that silent monster she had witnessed for a brief moment then.

And then, against all of Valerie's expectations, Phantom had approached _her _one day. Normally, she was the one to instigate confrontations, and when she saw that he was rather quiet at first, she had tensed, preparing for the worse.

But then he had talked to her, and for once, it seemed as if Phantom was opening his heart to her- that was, if he had a heart. He was still the ghost that had ruined her life, after all, she sometimes had to remind herself of that fact. There were times, she had to admit, that she almost wanted to let go of her grudge, to forgive and forget, but she couldn't do that. It was too deeply embroiled in her to do that.

But for whatever reason, she had decided to listen that day. He just... seemed like he was in such distress. She couldn't help it, there was a part of her that wanted to know what was wrong, and wanted to help him, if only a little bit. She didn't quite understand it- it was probably just because Phantom looked like a troubled teenage boy, only one that glowed and could float. Still, she supposed that she should reward his courage at least, for seeking her out in the first place.

So she'd listened.

It probably would have been easier for her if she hadn't.

Phantom told her that something in him was changing, and that he was trying to fight this something. He told her that the other day, when he had hurt her shoulder, that it wasn't entirely him- and although Valerie had been skeptical at first, there was something in the ghost's face as he went on that made her more inclined to believe him. A pleading look for understanding, for someone to learn what was happening to him and to understand, a person that was desperately reaching out for someone to save him and finding no one, left to drown instead.

It probably would have been much simpler to push all of that aside if not for the fact that Phantom resembled the boy that she had a crush on since freshman year, Danny Fenton. She didn't think that the two were related, of course, Danny being a human, and a nice, if somewhat clumsy and troubled kid, and Phantom being a ghost, the ghost that had ruined her life, she reminded herself again. Likely, it was just a coincidence. After all, they did say that there were three people who looked like you in the world, and she guessed that expression didn't just apply to humans. Phantom was just a ghost who happened to look somewhat like Danny Fenton, that was all.

But it was enough to make her take his words more seriously.

Something was inside of his head, he told her, and that something was trying to take him over. He told her that he was trying to fight this, and was trying to prevent it from happening- because he knew exactly what would happen if all of his morals and reason were lost. Valerie had wanted to snort at that, to roll her eyes, but she stopped herself, because she knew that whatever grudge she might bare against him, Phantom did seem to have something resembling them. That was why he held back when they fought, she suspected, because she was human, because she wasn't a ghost, and that if she got too hurt, she couldn't just recover, like a ghost would.

And that's when he got to what he had sought her out for in the first place- and that was to ask her for a favor. A promise, really. And Valerie had scoffed at the idea of promising anything to the ghost boy, but once Phantom told her what it was that he wanted her to promise, well...

She couldn't exactly say no.

_"If something happens to me, and I start to hurt people, please stop me. Do anything, pull out all the stops, just stop me, __**please**__."_

She had given him her word, her vow, even. He had been so desperate for it that she couldn't say no. Nor did she want Phantom to hurt people, or any ghost to hurt people, for that matter. But Valerie Gray wasn't dumb, she knew that if Phantom started to want to harm humans, then there was very little the average human could do to stop him. He would probably go on a rampage, and she didn't want to find out just how much death and destruction a Phantom without any morals could leave in his wake.

"Quiet night, isn't it?"

Valerie very nearly jumped right out of her skin, spinning around on her jet sled and charging one of her ectoguns at the intruder, before she lowered, it rolling her eyes. "Oh, it's you." She said shortly. Speak of the devil and he shall appear, was it?

This was the Phantom that Valerie was familiar with, she could tell by that damnably smug look on his face he got when he realized how badly he had spooked her. "What do you want, Phantom? Here to try and make me rescind on my promise? Because you gave me free reign to waste you, and I _do not_ want to miss that chance."

"No." Phantom said after a moment, his expression darkening as he shook his head. "I was just making sure you remembered it."

"Of course I remember it, you only made me promise it like two days ago." Valerie rolled her eyes. "And then the weird bit afterwards. What was all that about anyways, Phantom? That I shouldn't regret anything I saw after I destroyed you? You make it sound like they'll be any part of you left once I'm doing tearing you apart. You know, _should _you go crazy."

"It's a necessary clause." Phantom shrugged his shoulders, keeping that one close to himself. There were people in his life that needed to know about Phantom being Danny Fenton, but Valerie was not one of those people. If anything, Valerie knowing that particular truth would have only caused him even more problems than he already had, and he was trying to avoid adding stress to his life, and was trying to concentrate on taking it away for the moment.

The only thing Valerie needed to know was that he could one day become a danger to those in Amity Park, and that she shouldn't hold back when it came to that- and that she shouldn't feel the need to hate what she's done in the event that he turned back into Danny Fenton.

"So, other than checking to see if our little promise still stands, what else brings you here, Phantom?" Valerie asked, quirking a brow.

"Just to let you know that the Fentons are like to hunt me just as passionately as you will if I do lose it." Phantom told her, his voice strangely quiet, seeming rather distant. It was almost like he hated to prospect of the Fentons hunting him. "You should work with them if that does happen."

"Oh boy, _Jack Fenton_." Valerie rolled her eyes underneath her mask. "That's helpful backup. But I'm curious, ghost, usually your kind has a pretty strong self preservation instinct. And here you are, asking me to destroy you should you start to go crazy. What makes _you _so different?"

Phantom gave her a weak smile, shrugging his shoulders. "I just am. I don't want to hurt people, I never have."

"Yeah? You should tell that to my father. Because of you, he not only lost his job, but he landed himself in thousands of dollars of debt." Valerie snapped at the ghost, her lips set in a tight frown. "That's why I started hunting you in the first place, ghost kid."

"I'm _hardly _a kid anymore." Phantom quirked an eyebrow. He was eighteen years old now, after all, hardly the awkward prepubescent boy he had been when he had started this whole Phantom thing. "And I'm sorry about that. If I hurt you, I didn't mean to. I've said this before, in fact, but you never really seemed to want to listen to me. We don't have to be enemies, you know."

He didn't say it out loud, but he knew rather well that Valerie being the Red Hunter was one of his sources of stress. Still, he wasn't going to blame her for it- that wasn't the kind of person he was.

Oh, he knew that Valerie Gray, a girl he had dated briefly in freshman year, was the Red Hunter. He'd known that even when he had been dating her, as awkward as that made things between them, if only on his side. He knew _why _she was the Red Hunter and he couldn't entirely blame her for it. He also knew who was supplying her with weapons, and that did worry him a little bit. He worried what Vlad Masters would do to Valerie if she ever proved to not be useful to him anymore. He didn't exactly have a stellar track record.

No doubt if he knew what was happening to him, he would be more than eager to encourage it, thinking it would be a way to have him as his son, his pupil. That would never happen, that much Danny was sure of, even if he did lose, he doubted that Black would ever want to be underneath anyone's thumb.

"Yeah, well, the fact remains." Valerie said stubbornly.

"That's kind of what I thought you would say." Phantom gave her a small grin, floating off a bit, before she changed her mind and decided to start shooting at him now. Her hand looked a little twitchy on that trigger after all, and he didn't trust that for one second. "I'm still going to apologize to you again for it though."

"Save your breath." Valerie told him, before realizing the inappropriateness of that remark. Phantom was gone before she could come up with another piece of snark, however, and she grumbled a little, finally stowing away her ectogun. "I don't understand that ghost." She mumbled to herself, before deciding that she would try her luck elsewhere in Amity Park. If a ghost didn't show up in the next thirty minutes, she would most likely turn in and go home for the night, but honestly, she was kind of hoping one would.

Encounters with Phantom always left her a bit irritated, and she could _use_ something ghostly to work that out on.

* * *

He had gone out as Phantom, that much Maddie knew, even though she had told him to stay home tonight. He had been doing ghost patrols every night since he was fourteen, she had found out- _fourteen! _He had just been a little baby when he had started doing this whole ghost hunting business, and she didn't like that one bit. She didn't like the fact that he had been endangering his life on a nearly daily basis when his only worry should be whether or not he remembered to bring his homework to class.

Maddie had gone down into the lab, where she had been working for several hours straight now. With her son's agreement, she had gotten some blood and DNA samples from him, in order to make sure that there wasn't something horrifyingly wrong with him on a genetic level that he just didn't know about that would mean he would just keel over dead one of these days. Thankfully, she hadn't found anything like that in his blood, or in the genetic samples, although she could have just missed it due to all of the other mutations her son had developed.

She was still having trouble wrapping her mind around the concept of a_ half-ghost_, to be honest. It simply ran so contrary to everything she knew, that she couldn't just accept it right away. She knew that she would be able to, in time, but until then, she would most likely be locked in a state of half-denial about the whole thing.

They were going to tell Jack, they had both agreed on that. Maddie offered to break the news to his father by herself, and he seemed fine with that. Talking about it twice in two days had been enough for his nerves, she thought, so she could take care of this one. There was also the fact that her husband seemed to be the type to jump to conclusions without really thinking them through, and if Maddie was the one who told him, she could temper that somewhat.

She had gone over what she would tell Jack several times, changing and editing things here and there. She knew that she had to break the news to him slowly, and made sure that he understood that Danny was Danny, and that as unbelievable as it was, things like half-ghosts were real. If needed, she would show him the samples that she had taken. She had very little doubt that Jack would ultimately accept Danny, after all, he was his son, and Jack loved him just as much as she did.

Jazz too, she thought, she would have to tell Jazz as well. It didn't seem right to leave their daughter out on what would quickly become a family secret. Danny had told her that he had revealed himself to Sam and Tucker as well- the reason for why he had been walking on air a few days ago, it seemed, but that nobody else knew. And he wanted to keep it that way- and honestly, Maddie could understand why.

There would be many people, after all, who wouldn't understand. No doubt that the Guys in White would try and take him in for experimentation, and the thought of her baby boy strapped to some lab table somewhere made Maddie shudder. She tried to ignore the fact that just until a few hours ago, she had wanted to do the same to Phantom herself. She was suddenly so glad, _so glad_, that they had never managed to catch the ghost boy.

Would people argue that being half-dead meant that her son didn't have any human rights? Would they argue that he deserved to be locked up, as some kind of freak of nature, to be studied against his will, to have inhumane things done to him? How had Danny managed to go through his life thinking about such things- and Maddie knew surely, that these things must have occurred to him at some point.

She and Jack would accept him as both their son and as Phantom, and Sam and Tucker would accept him as both their friend and Phantom, as she knew her daughter would accept him as both her brother and Phantom- but what about other people? Some would, she thought- but others? No, they would not, and no amount of words would ever change their minds. Sam's parents, she thought, might be among that number, and they would most likely attempt to see to it that Danny never saw Sam again. Perhaps they would go so far as to move away, far away, too far for Danny to follow and find her ever again.

Maddie wasn't going to let that happen. She was going to _make sure_ that nobody else ever found out.

Sighing, she pushed away from her desk, her chair sliding against the floor. Frankly, her head was starting to throb going over these samples time and time again. It was time for a break, she thought, and glancing over towards the clock, she knew that now might be a good time to call Jazz. It was late at night here, but where Jazz was it was earlier in the evening, and her classes would be over. Now would be the best time to call her.

Perhaps she could convince her to take a short break from her classes and come home to see her brother. Surely her daughter, who was studying psychology, could be of some help to him.

Heading upstairs, she grabbed the phone, dialing Jazz's number. Her husband was asleep upstairs, having conked out an hour or so ago. She could hear the sound of him snoring from down here, he must have forgotten to close the door to their room again, she realized dimly. That was her husband though- he was always _so _forgetful.

"Mom!" Jazz's voice spoke up first over the phone. "What is it? Usually you don't call me until the weekend. Did something happen?" She asked, and there was no hint of real worry in her tone- perhaps she just thought that her mother had some surprising news to share with her.

"Jazz honey, do you think you could take a few days off from school?" Maddie asked her. "Your father and I want you to come home for a little bit. At least, as long as you're able to." She told her.

"Sure, I think I can arrange that." Jazz frowned. "But why? Did something happen?" She asked again, and now there was a note of concern in her voice.

Maddie heaved a small sigh over the phone. "Honey, do you know about your brother?" She asked her. "I can't talk about it over the phone, but if you do know, that's why we need you here. To help Danny."

Jazz sucked in her breath a little when she asked him about Danny, and that was all Maddie needed to know to tell her that Jazz knew. She had found out, in some manner, but had clearly kept this information to herself. For how long, Maddie wondered- how long had she known about this?

"Okay, mom." Jazz said finally. "I'll come home on the next flight that I can get. Sometime tomorrow evening, I hope." She told her. "Is everything fine there, though? Nothing's... nothing is wrong, right?"

"Somewhat." Maddie admitted. "I don't want to talk about that over the phone either, but it's not an _immediate _thing. Still, having the whole family here would be helpful. Danny could use you right now, Jazz. You understand a field that I've never looked much into."

"I don't like the sound of that." Maddie could almost _hear _her daughter's frown over the phone. "Okay mom, I'm coming home tomorrow evening. You let Danny know that, okay? And mom?" She paused a little, almost hesitating.

"Yes, honey?" Maddie asked, though she had some idea of what the question was.

"You're... still okay with Danny, right?" Jazz asked, almost sounding as if she didn't want to.

"I am." Maddie said, smiling a little in spite of herself. "I love him, Jazz. He's my son, and there's nothing that will ever change that."

There was audible relief in Jazz's voice when she spoke next. "Good. Let me say goodbye now mom, so I can get to making arrangements all the faster. I'll see you tomorrow, with any luck."

"See you tomorrow, honey." Maddie said, hanging up the phone. Setting it aside on the table, she stood up, glancing towards the room she shared with Jack, listening to his snoring for a few moments before she nodded her head, making her way up the stairs. Once she entered their room, she made her way to Jack's side, placing a gentle hand on his shoulder, giving her husband a soft nudge.

"Jack?" Maddie's voice spoke up, shaking her husband a little. He stirred a bit, looking up at his wife with a smile- before noticing the serious expression on her face, realizing that she wasn't just here to whisper sweet nothings into his ear.

"What is it, Maddie?" Jack asked, sitting up in bed. "Is something wrong?"

"Jack," Maddie began, sitting on the bed next to him. "We need to talk."


End file.
